Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Surrogate Journals

It strikes me that not everyone keeps a journal or a blog ... this was no major revelation mind you, just something I have to remind myself now and again when I am socialising. "Not everyone writes a journal Pamela", I sometimes have to soothe myself ...

There are so many other forms of chronicalling our lives. I mused here recently about the visit of an old friend. Catching up on news face-to-face is a great way to review the months since last you met. Even emailing a friend regularly can become a type of journal experience - especially if you (or they) keep them all and you can review them at a later date.

Then there is your daily diary. If you record your activities (and perhaps some qualitative comments about the day) then your appointment diary becomes your journal too ...

More recently for me I have had a young cousin staying from Cananda. This has inspired more conversations with other family memebers too. And I see these interactions as a nother way of telling the stories of our lives ... our family lives, history and points of remembrance ... all really important aspects of who we are.

It is making me feel quite strongly about my heritage, especially my female heritage, right now.

Consider the things that are journalling, but without journalling ... collecting letters, notes, souveniers from movies you go to, photo albums, postcards or your scrap book.

Expanding the definition of journalling as a verb can only be a healthy thing I am sure ...

2 comments:

Vlad said...

Cananda? Memebers? New countries? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

Kidding. You might try a little spell checky checky though.

Lord Winshield of Camry said...

it's interesting, i really hate writing, but i found this journal i kept for a class my freshman year of high school, and i was suddenly so happy that i had been made to do it. since then i've been trying to write my daily experiences more often.