I think that a travel journal would be so cool...kind of like an Anthony Bourdain "No Reservations" series. Combine photos, recipes, menus, souvenirs, etc. and enjoy anytime. I haven't traveled much at all, and so this forum fills in some of those empty spots...hearing from people from various places, about their travels, interests, etc.
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Posted 1 year ago #
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I treasure my travel journals - I have some pretty lame ones from when I was in Primary school - but it's a habit that I learnt, and when I've travelled alone, I've still done them (I do them whilst travelling, with digital cameras, it easy enough to print photos). It means when I get home and people ask 'how was it', I offer them my journal - photos, tickets, stubs, and some words if I've had spare time in planes/airports. I've made sure they are accessible on my bookshelf/bed head (cause the bookshelf is covered by my bed, so 'historic' stuff is hidden and quite unaccessible). I encourage you to journal when you travel!
My only question - when I go back to places, I find it weird to journal. I've seen the train tickets before, and I see it with 'old' eyes, and have a lot less to journal. For now, it just goes into a memory box for the year with photos and birthday cards etc.
Posted 1 year ago # -
I have one box (actually an accordian file folder) with letters and journals and cards. This is a bit of an irritant to me, as it is my only "sentiments" box remaining. Once I burned a journal because I was so ashamed of how I had lived my life that year--decisions I was not proud of, stupid boy stuff, angry tirades against people who wounded me. As there was no place to burn it in a flat I opened all the windows (middle of icy winter) pulled out the cast iron frying pan and some matches, and burned one page at a time. Catharsis by crucible.
I have only kept the letters from 3 particular friends and my mother, all of whom are remarkable letter-writers.
Yesterday I finally got a new laptop (mine died last spring, and I am on a little mini notebook EAWS.) The next purchase is a scanner (budgeted for March).
So the letters will be scanned and the originals tossed, and as for the journals, well, I don't know yet. They don't take up much space at all but I still feel kind of weird about keeping them. Undecided. They are not great art. I don't have children to pass them on to.
Posted 1 year ago # -
ninakk: I like your way of using a digital journal, I may copy it!
I've never kept a diary but I have a box of letters dh wrote to me when we were living on different sides of the planet 20 years ago. We wrote a few times a week, he probably threw mine out, which is quite funny when you consider he's the hoarder in the family! I read them occasionally, he's a bit of a romantic and is a good writer: funny and descriptive, though his writing is rubbish. I couldn't possibly throw them out, though I should probably retrieve them from the understairs cupboard and check they're still in OK condition. A digital backup is a good idea djk.Posted 1 year ago # -
@Ginger - You're very welcome! I'm glad you liked the link :o) My co-worker had purchased one for me about 3 or 4 years ago and I absolutely loved it. When I started running out of pages I went on amazon.com in the hopes I would find someone selling them, and I did. Then I saw the other journals for travel, food, etc. and I thought they were adorable!
Posted 1 year ago # -
I used to journal pretty regularly. Then about 8 years ago I was dating a guy who decided to go through them while I was in the shower or something, not really sure. They were on my desk, but still, he had no right to go through my personal stuff and read my journals. He did this with my computer too (that should have been a sign to ditch him right away, but I wasn't that smart.) Then he'd use the stuff he read as the months went on, like, "I know why you want to go to that bar, it's because you think the bartender is hot." Um, no, that was just a perk when I was single. So I threw them all away and for a long time didn't commit a single word to paper. The past 3 years I've journaled off and on, but nothing regular, not much of it worthwhile, but it's cathartic. I do wish I still had the journal from high school, as it detailed my very brief relationship with my now-fiance, and it would be nice to be able to read back over some of the things from 13 years ago. Oh well, now I know to never throw away my journals. I'll probably scan my current one and put it in a password protected file so I don't end up gethering piles of notebooks as the years go on, though I know my fiance would never read anything I didn't give him explicit permission to.
Posted 1 year ago # -
I didn't write an actual journal when I was younger, but I did write on random pieces of paper when something happened that I wanted to write about (I do that online these days). I have a box that contained bunch of stuff including those bits of paper.
I stumbled upon the box recently and started leafing through stuff. I realized I was still applying the teenage feeling of "OMG it will be the end of the world if anyone reads these!!!!1one!1" to the papers even though I couldn't ever remember what I had written.
I started reading through them (the ones that were written in a decent enough hand writing) and I guess I'm the minority here since I didn't feel embarrassed about them at all. Mostly I felt just indifferent and in some cases mildly amused, but I'd say it's quite telling how I felt about them as I didn't even bother ripping the papers in two, I just tossed them in the paper recycling.Still in the same box are my high school calendars (3 of them) and the letter notebooks I used to write with my best friend. Those will be dealt with later.
Posted 1 year ago # -
oops. Last week I posted that I had just one container of journals and letters. Found another stash tonight, including a couple of photo albums. Sigh. How could THAT have gotten away? Maybe I will speed up that scanner purchase.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Oh, I could never get rid of my own journals! I wrote in one fairly regularly from the age of 12 to about 15 or 16 and it's full of teenage drama! Everything was such a huge trauma at that age, and I certainly over-used exclamation marks. :)
I then wrote in one daily from about 18 to 20. It's a facinating document of my late teens through university. Some of it just makes me cringe mightily, but I could never throw them away. I gradually became blogging on-line and stopped paper-journalling when I realised I was just duplicating stuff I'd already written online.
Posted 1 year ago #
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