Do You Keep A Diary?

[ER]

(Boy, do I ever.)



Saturday March 20, 1999

Called and said hello to everyone at home*. (Well, all except the person most on my mind.) Everybody reported being well. Told Dad about my idea for the sleep/cancer link, and he was impressed.

Ended up talking to Dana the longest of the six calls I made, and she says she’s getting fatter this pregnancy, and I asked if maybe that meant she was having a boy, was there any connection, and she said she’s convinced she’ll only have girls, and vowed this is absolutely her last pregnancy. I believe her.**

Laid in bed and read and texted them to PLEASE work out a designated driver among them and PLEASE not to call me for a ride tonight unless they absolutely had to.

May watch the tape of The Shining that’s been lying on the table forever.




* I was away in college in the Northeast.


** Dana is my cousin. She actually not only did have a boy (who himself became a dad this week!), she went on to have three more children and only one of them a girl, so the joke was on her.

[claws]

Why am I not surprised? 

Never had a diary. As I kid I had a scrapbook of sort where I did small drawings on the pages, and would always include a date. I did this for about two years. Kept it another year and then threw it in the trash when I reached puberty.

[RCMerchant]

No. If I did it would look like Jack's story in the Shining- just repetitive s**t over and over and over...

[Rev. Powell]

Sort of. I keep a confessional of my sins, to be published after I die.

[Alex]

Does my long post thread count? I do have a diary and when I know where it is, then it gets filled in.

[ER]

Does my long post thread count? I do have a diary and when I know where it is, then it gets filled in.

Actually, yeah, totally, and you should print it out or at least put it in a document off-site.

[ER]

Sort of. I keep a confessional of my sins, to be published after I die.

That is (probably a joke) AWESOME! I almost wish I hadn't read that, now that idea's swimming in my head.

Mine would have to begin at birth, since by being born I probably kept my parents together when they may not otherwise have been (is that a sin?), and it'd end so far with me entertaining negative thoughts about my dog standing up on his hind legs and trying to drink out of the faucet.

Suggesting a posthumously-viable sin diary to a parahyperthymesia is like giving thinner, matches and a garden shed to a pyromaniac.

[indianasmith]

I kept a diary from my childhood up through the end of my Navy years (1986), and then got out of the habit. 
I started again in 2007 and haven't missed a day since.

[Archivist]

Definitely. For the last 16 years, I've kept a digital diary, and prior to that, it was handwritten. I started when I was six or seven, using pocket diaries that my parents gave me. I made note of the cool movies and TV shows I watched, often drawing pictures of what I'd seen, like The Black Hole or a funny episode of The Goodies or Dr Who. Journaling started with more emphasis when I was about 15, although chunks of time are missing from when I was very busy.

Now, with a digital diary, I can go back and make entries about things at any time, fill in with pictures, paste in URL's to relevant websites, and write as much or as little as I want. I make notes for every day, have done so for the last six or seven years. Everything is password protected so it's quite secure, too. It's one of my most enjoyable and valuable habits.

[chefzombie]

not since i was 16.

[Allhallowsday]

Sort of. I keep a confessional of my sins, to be published after I die.

That's just like RODDY McDOWALL; his "dishy diary" will be published in 2098 when he's been dead 100 years.   

[ER]

Sort of. I keep a confessional of my sins, to be published after I die.

That's just like RODDY McDOWALL; his "dishy diary" will be published in 2098 when he's been dead 100 years.  

I hope his is more worth waiting for than Mark Twain's time capsule of writings. I think that was Twain's joke on us all because he was way too skilled a writer to have left behind something as flat as that was unless he did it on purpose to get the last laugh on posterity.

In her own memoir Maureen O'Hara said McDowall had some big secret he promised to tell her, but died first. (Don't you hate when that happens to you?)

[chefzombie]

yup.my da did that to me. took me 20 years to find out that i have italian cousins who didn't know about us. nice folks, but we don't see each other as family. my grandmonster is responsible, as usual.

[ER]

Okay, to carry over from RC's old "Do You Believe" thread, this is self-explanatory and needs no particular annotation (except "AC" was my Aunt Christie).

No one who wasn't there though will get how absolutely scary this music was!



Thursday October 12, 1995
 
I gave Brian AC’s book (“riding the rails back in time”) and told him I’d read it, and Brian said that I am dangerous when inspired. That made me laugh. I asked why he said that and he said when I am pursuing a thread of inspiration I am unstoppable, and he just gets out of my way. Ha.

It was the first time he’d been back to his apartment since….I was last there. (Such logic, Evelyn!) I asked if there was any chance he was going to move in with his dad, and he said zero chance. Since he didn’t bring up the topic of that talk with his father, I didn’t, and would as soon it didn’t come up at all.

Played this Indian music Brian checked out from the university library. It was chants to the goddess Kali the Destroyer, that supposedly went back to the 600s AD, and were so powerful they were distracting. He asked if I wanted him to turn them off, and I said no, so I focused on them, and I wonder if the “chants” weren’t actually more like incantations or a summoning prayer, because there was something almost…scary about them. No….terrifying. They changed the feeling in the room.

When we were done even he said, “Do you have the feeling I shouldn’t play that record again?”

And I actually said, “Yeah.”

He said, “God, and I have to sleep here tonight.”

It was like neither of us wanted to touch that record, but I finally took it off the turntable where it was spinning and spinning. Brian said something else that added to this feeling that we had trespassed onto something when he said, “I was the first person since 1977 to check that out.”

Hearing that made it feel like we were “marked.” Like I said, I wonder what those “chants” were actually saying? And I wonder if we looked back, if something bad happened to that person in 1977?

Back by six and studied with Dad for tomorrow’s tests. Felt paranoid driving home, like someone was in the back seat, and felt jumpy all evening, sleeping with my light on tonight, and even so I won’t be surprised if I have nightmares.

Later---Brian called me from his dad’s on the downstairs phone, he decided to stay over there tonight, and this is freaky because he said, “What did we do today, open a portal to Hell?”

He was…kidding, but I go, “Do you have this real strong case of freak out too?”

He said, “Yeah, like if I turn around fast I’m going to see some black shadow move out of my field of vision, but when I turn away it’ll come back again.”

OK, I am officially freaked out tonight, because that is exactly how I feel.

I said, “Where is that record?”

“My place.”

“Don’t go back there alone. We need to get rid of it. We’ll take it back. But don’t go alone.” (Yeah, I said all this, I swear.)

He goes, “Now you’re being silly.”

But it doesn’t feel like it. So we talked and I got the impression I was lots more bothered than him, but I kept on him until he admitted to me, yes, it was seriously like playing that record did something to us. Like…conjured something. What if it was a spell? I mean what ARE chants to a demon-goddess anyway???

Later---It’s 3:14, and I got so spooked I seriously went in and told Dad everything and told him no, I was not on drugs, by the way, ha-ha, and he said music can’t hurt you, just influence how you feel, and I said I don’t know, think about what Kali is, and half a billion people believe she’s as real as real itself, and what were those voices on that evil sounding chanting and screaming saying?

Dad went from making fun of me to sort of trying to rationalize things and said to sleep with my door open, and I said I couldn’t Charlotte would start roaming the house.

He goes, “Does she seem freaked out to you?”

I said, “No.”

He said, “Well dogs can sense things, so if she’s not spooked, don’t you be either. And tell your damn boyfriend to quit scaring my daughter because she’s messing up my sleep.”

Ha. So….I don’t know. I’ve said before listen to your instincts, they are as much there to keep you safe as intellect is, and I seriously…at like 3:18 in the morning, think Brian and I did something like paid tribute to evil today by playing that, and I feel very scared tonight.

[FatFreddysCat]

I used to keep a journal (I always used to say, "girls write 'diaries, dudes write 'JOURNALS!'").... I started during my high school/college years and kept it going well into my mid 20s. (roughly 1985 till about 1997). I used to try and write an entry every day (or at least every other day) but as the years went on it became harder to find time to keep it current, so eventually I let it fade away.

A couple of years ago I pulled the boxes full of notebooks out of the attic for the first time in a long while and when I started glancing through them .... I wished I could reach back in time and slap the sh** outta my younger self for wasting so many hours writing such self-important drivel, haha. Seriously, my attitudes on so many things have changed since those days that I was constantly cringing like, "Did I really write THAT? Was I serious? Did I really feel that way once? Good Lord," haha.

After a while I realized that there was really nothing in these books that was worth keeping so I began to read a little bit every night (starting with the first volume and going in order), then tearing out what I'd just read, ripping it into lil' bitty pieces and throwing it away.  

It took a few months to get thru 'em all but when I finished that project, I realized that it had actually been somewhat therapeutic -- I think it helped me ditch some lingering emotional baggage I'd been carrying around without even realizing it.