Fate Of Your Pages

[Charles Skinner]

I really doubt that people in the future will want to read my journals, and that is all right with me. About my journals being personal --- I have told both of my wives ---- first died ---- that ---- "There is nothing in my journals that I would would not want you to read, but just on general terms, I would rather you not read them." C. S.

[amberleadavis]

I pulled out one of my journals from when I was my daughter's age and handed it to her. We had a good laugh. Turns out that 16 year old girls are worried about boys, being cool, grades, getting yelled at and they don't want to clean house - and that doesn't matter if you are 16 in 1986 or in 2016.

[Fuzzy_Bear]

Someone asked, so I thought I'd answer so everyone could get an idea. My safe is 15" wide, 12" tall and 15" deep. I can stuff about 30 spiral notebooks in there. More if I take out the two little money drawers. That's where my watches live.

[pararis]

I pulled out one of my journals from when I was my daughter's age and handed it to her. We had a good laugh. Turns out that 16 year old girls are worried about boys, being cool, grades, getting yelled at and they don't want to clean house - and that doesn't matter if you are 16 in 1986 or in 2016.

As a parenting instructor, I like this VERY much! Great intimacy.

[amberleadavis]

Someone asked, so I thought I'd answer so everyone could get an idea. My safe is 15" wide, 12" tall and 15" deep. I can stuff about 30 spiral notebooks in there. More if I take out the two little money drawers. That's where my watches live.

 

 

I would prefer to have the safe full of money

[amberleadavis]

As a parenting instructor, I like this VERY much! Great intimacy.

 

Thank you. It was a little embarrassing when she saw those "old guys" through my eyes.

[Kublai Khan]

Good question by the OP. I better start ripping out and burning specific pages of incriminating evidence. There goes my vacation time.

[estie1948]

I pulled out one of my journals from when I was my daughter's age and handed it to her. We had a good laugh. Turns out that 16 year old girls are worried about boys, being cool, grades, getting yelled at and they don't want to clean house - and that doesn't matter if you are 16 in 1986 or in 2016.

This is the best use of an old journal I've ever heard of. Brilliant idea and what a lot of courage on your part. You got to teach her important things. You taught her that you really do understand things she is going through and that she can come to you with her personal questions and private thoughts without worrying if you will laugh, belittle, or berate her because you have shown her your personal questions and private thoughts even though she might have laughed, belittled, or berated you. The most important thing may well be the lesson that you can trust each other, something too few parents and children are able do today in my opinion. I think you main have established a great deal of respect with your daughter - maybe "made stronger" is a better choice of words than "established", for I have a strong feeling that there was a great deal of respect already in place.

 

My hat's off to you!

 

-David (Estie).

Edited August 3, 2016 by estie1948

[amberleadavis]

It was scary. I am glad I didn't hover and watch her read it. She started reading a section that had prewritten questions including what is your greatest fear.

 

I do not expect that she will let me read her journal but maybe we can keep talking.

[adamselene]

I have never even imagined getting rid of journals... but it seems it might be a liberating idea.

 

Will ponder more!

Edited May 23, 2017 by adamselene

[inkstainedruth]

In re-reading this thread, it occurred to me how valuable to my cousins my uncle's diary from when he was 16.

Back in the 1930s, there was some guy who had a radio show, and he bought an old sailing ship, with the idea to sail the ship around the world doing broadcasts. He hired a bunch of mostly college kids (and a couple of high school kids) to be the crew, and my uncle was one of the high schoolers; my grandparents let him go because they figured he'd just run away and do it anyway.

The ship got as far as American Somoa, where my uncle met my aunt (a chieftain's daughter, as it happened). After that they ran into a hurricane (or I guess cyclone, since it was the Pacific) and had to turn back. My uncle went home to NYC, and got a job on a steamship line doing the Atlantic run; then he disappeared. Years later, it turned out he had gone back to Somoa and married my aunt (mind you, she hadn't heard a peep from him in six years; and she had to arrange for my cousins to go to Hawaii for high school). My uncle ran the government mail boat for years (and the locals liked him because he stayed out of local politics, and because he was married to my aunt -- who was an important person). My cousins knew nothing of his early life though -- they always thought that there had been some horrible experience that he didn't want to ever talk about when he came home from his trips). Nope -- it was just my uncle. But my cousins were estatic to learn about the existence of the diary (which my grandparents apparently kept, and then my dad found after they died.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[amberleadavis]

Wow, what a story.

[Studio97]

inkstainedtruth: and this is why our journals should be kept. They are also a record of our thoughts preserved after we are gone. Like the encounter with one of my staff as i was taking the stairwell at the hospital carrying a stillborn baby to the morgue. Personal events, thoughts, local, national, international, dredges from the vietnam war era and more. Keep all your journals. And now i have a collection of my drawings and paintings too

[Studio97]

Oops.duplicate post

Edited June 11, 2017 by Studio97

[Studio97]

A coworker had a few documents about a past relative in WWI. Fron that i did some research which showed where he departed the US, where in France his unit arrived, his basic duty assignment and which major actions his unit was in. It wasnt good. People, our journals are important. Look at Sasoons WWI virtual journals page by page.

Edited June 11, 2017 by Studio97

[Moonshae]

I may wish to reread something in the future, so I won't destroy them myself. I primarily keep a journal just to get more use out of my pens, but it also helps me collect my thoughts for the day. If I were going to destroy them, I wouldn't even bother with a journal and would just write on loose paper and toss it in the bin every day. Why save it for any length of time if only to toss it? And then why spend money on a journal when cheap paper would suffice?

[Charles Skinner]

I certainly would not destroy my journals ----- from about 1960, with likely 95 percent written with real fountain pens. My children will keep them and treasury them, ------ but, as time goes by, and as I become a more and more distant "reality," my great, great, great grandchildren will not know of me at all, ---- likely. ---- At some point, perhaps 85 or 90 years from now, one or more of the people ---- who "come after me,"---- will say ----- "We need to get rid of these old dusty books. They are just taking up space"-------- (and my journals WOULD take up a lot of space) for a small house or apartment a hundred years from now. As I have said many times, to many people who are excited to learn about my "journal writing sickness" ---- I write for MYSELF, not for people a hundred years from now!

 

One last thought ----- a hundred years from now, few people, if any, will be able to read cursive handwriting. EVERYTHING will come out of a super, super computer by then, and what I have written will be viewed by people living then as we view "writings" from the pyramids of Egypt!

 

So, write for yourself. Do not flatter yourself into thinking that people in the distant future will care about you. and care about you and "what you wrote," on June 11, 2017!

 

I can just see it now! "What does the word WROTE mean," many will say. If you think you are important and that people 200 years from now will want to know what was on your mind on June 11, 2017, you are delusional!

 

In no way should you get the idea that I think journals have very little value. The ARE valuable to YOU! Likely not to many, if not most, in the future.

 

Just my ideas. Excuse mistakes, if any.

 

C. S.

[Moonshae]

 

One last thought ----- a hundred years from now, few people, if any, will be able to read cursive handwriting. EVERYTHING will come out of a super, super computer by then, and what I have written will be viewed by people living then as we view "writings" from the pyramids of Egypt!

 

 

Even people who can read cursive have trouble reading journals written by soldiers in the Civil War. They were given to keep the troops occupied during the inevitable slow times, but handwriting has changed tremendously, and will continue to do so. There will always be historians as long as society can support them, and so there will likely always be people who can read cursive. Who knows what technology will change in 100 years, but I suspect that like now, there will be enough people interested in doing things "the old way" that handwriting in some form will persist. No doubt, however, that like now, handwriting will become increasingly uncommon and most will not know much about it. Digital fingerprints and retina scans will become unforgeable signatures.

[Crobe]

I have thought about destroying my journals but probably will not. There are times when I turn back to a particular time to verify something that happened, I realize that one day my children may get a good laugh out of what I have written. Besides, I did destroy one of my first journals (from the early 1970s) and I have regretted it.

 

I was inspired to begin keeping a journal after reading my great, great grandfather’s journals. He began keeping one in 1862 and although he does write about his war experiences and life as a prisoner of war, the war times are just a small part of what he recorded.

 

He wrote about his past, his family, daily occurrences, his wife and children. He wrote of his grief at the passing of his infant daughter, of sitting at his mother’s bedside as she lay dying. He wrote essays on topics from the study of microscopic organisms to language usage to notable sermons he had heard. He wrote of working for his uncle in his Mercantile Store. Occasionally he would throw in a fictional tale, some of which were VERY hilarious. He even wrote his observations of the photographer who took the photograph I am using as my avatar. All this in the most beautiful handwriting.

 

From what my great, great grandfather left us in his own hand, I feel I know him better than I know some of my relatives whom I actually have ‘known.’

 

People one hundred and fifty years from now may not care about reading what I have written, but then, there may be that one great, great grandchild who does.

 

Mike

Edited January 24, 2018 by Crobe

[Charles Skinner]

I would fight a bear to keep my journals from being destroyed, ----- BUT, But I really doubt that many of my family who come after me will be interested in "what that old man wrote," They will have their own lives and joys and sadness's, and will have little time to read what I have written, but, BUT there may be one or two that ARE interested, and will find the time to read some of what I have written over so many years. But, I DO NOT WRITE with others in mind! I can not say that strongly enough! My journal writing is FOR ME! You might say that looking at it that way does not make good sense. Perhaps you are right, but "there it is!" Long be the written word! C. S. (a poor earthen vessel)