Day 2 of Blogging 101: Why not just keep a diary, you say?
I kept a diary when I was probably around 8. It looked kinda like this:
Except the Sunbonnet Sue type character was a slim and slender teenage version. That was the first black mark against it. I got it as a gift, which was the second black mark against it: someone thought I needed a diary. A teenage girl diary. That had ominous implications written ALL over it. I remember the angst of sitting down to write my deep dark secret thoughts and not finding the words.
I mean really not finding the words – one line I just can’t forget:
“I feel like an old piece of cheese, just laying there.”
Grammar (?) aside, I think my little brother had just been born. The truth of the matter is that someone was thinking of me and wanted to give me an outlet.
Now, I love cheese. I don’t know if I did then, but I certainly do now. Even the picture below, makes me want to eat cheese:
There was the kernel of some self-regard in my little plaintive statement. My cursive handwriting was perfect by the way and yes, I had just learned it. It compensated some, along with my purple ball point pen, for the humiliating other-imposed exercise of writing in a diary. My flowery perfectly even cursive handwriting kinda matched a teenage Sunbonnet Sue, and I was pretty sure she was who my mom really wanted me to be.
The point of all this being that I don’t like diaries. They are too personal. As in, the only person involved is myself. I’d try a little harder if I thought you might be reading it. And, if I am open to you reading it, then maybe I am open to moving beyond what I wrote and luxuriating in a fancy cheese platter with prosciutto and baguette cut up into little tiny delicious pieces.
This post was inspired by my sister. The featured image is “A Girl Writing” by Henriette Browne painted in 1870. All works by Henriette Brown (1829-1901) are in the public domain.
Exhibition 1874 