Week 1: Diaries & Journals and their Personal Purposes

When contemplating life’s struggles, I often think through these situations in terms of how I would write about them.  I think that mock-presenting my feelings and developing outlooks helps me to see from a different angle as well as to organize the different aspects of the situation.  However, I’ve never been one to actually keep a diary/journal.  By nature, I’m a very private person and for no specific reasons I don’t trust very easily.  The idea of having my thoughts and feelings be so public or tangibly available (as is the case with a physically diary/journal, whether private or public), gives me some anxiety.  Maybe it has something to do with the concept of permanency that attaches itself to written history, I don’t necessarily want to be tethered to my feelings within a given moment when, in the next, they can change without the audience having seen the process through which that change took place.  I suppose, that process would then be something else I could write about, but that could begin to become a tiresome cycle.

In social media, we tend to document some of our day-to-day experiences, but we rarely delve into how we feel about them.  I love the fact that so many great memories are recorded on Facebook and that I can so easily recall and see them.  I can see a purpose to also having access to a narrative in my own words about how I felt at the time because the distance of time can blur that aspect of a memory.  Although I am hesitant to share overtly personal feelings and experiences in a public online platform, I don’t explicitly think that it should not be done.  There is definite value in doing so when it can and has helped so many people process emotions and develop a stronger sense of self.  How much of oneself is poured into a post is really up to the writer.  Oversharing is a subjective concept and will doubtlessly be judged differently from reader to reader.  What one reader views as overshared information could be invaluably helpful to the next reader.

I think that diaries and journals are so interesting to other people because there is a concept that the experience is more personally narrated which satisfies a voyeuristic nature that seems to be intrinsic to human beings.  Although the word ‘voyeur’ and its various forms can have a derogatory connotation, this nature could arise from many different motives, whether out of curiosity or a desire to relate, connect or feel less alone.

I think that diary/journal writing is somehow a hybrid of writing in a stream of consciousness and writing with formal writing constraints in mind.  Perhaps this is because, whether private or public, the writer is still writing with an ideal reader, or rather an ideal listener, in mind.  I say ‘ideal listener’ because I tend to view diary/journal keeping as a form of therapy, a way to talk something through in a more structured manner.  So, although writing can give a sense of freedom to speak candidly, there is still often a desire to be heard.  This may be where the concept of voice comes in.  This aspect of structured writing that governs the stream of consciousness could be the influence of whatever voice the writer has developed as they speak to their ideal listener.  John Grisham points out, in his 2010 commencement address to the graduating class of UNC, voice in writing is comprised of three essential elements; clarity, authenticity, and voracity.  These three characteristics seem to sum up what one’s reasons would be for adding meaning to the madness of stream-of-consciousness writing because where there is an effort to build a relationship with one’s invisible ideal listener, there must be an effort to seem reliable and relatable.

Whether a person is concerned with spelling errors and organization should have to do with how their ideal listener is consuming the material.  If the diary/journal is private and the ideal listener is only consuming what is written in concept, then these features are less important.  However, if the medium of the diary/journal is online, then attention should be paid to these features as a courtesy to the readers.  I think name dropping, skill boasting and things like that go along with the concept of oversharing.  The degree to which it is excessive is subjective and likely to be different from reader to reader.

Work Cited:

Grishom, John. “2010 Commencement Address | UNC-Capel Hill.” YouTube, 10 May 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjRtXTPQ6wI