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-- Do you have a diary or journal and have you found it helpful, personally (emotionally or physiologically)??
I've toyed with having a diary over the years, during stressful periods. But I'm usually only good at daily entries for about a week...then I get busy, or my need to use it to clear my head passes, or I'm just to tired by the time I get to bed....and I get out of the habit.
-- Also, is there any one else (like me) who'd LIKE to write a diary, or personal journal....if for no other reason than to put your own thoughts into words and help you figure out your emotions and thoughts....BUT....who doesn't do it because it could be hurtful to others.....
Of course, the diary wouldn't be written with the intent to hurt others, but, sometimes we just have thoughts that even friends and family don't need to know about. Some truly personal thoughts perhaps they wouldn't understand.
I find myself asking is there anywhere to put down one's thoughts and yet make sure they'll be truly private.
I suppose I could put type them on the computer, and then remove them to a thumb drive...
I'm not tech savvy at all....IS there a way to encrypt (and I'm not even sure that's the correct word) or put a pass code on certain files or a diary on your own computer. If I write it in word for example, how could I make sure no one can open that but me?
Thanks.
I don't keep a PHYSICAL diary for fear of someone finding it (the stuff I write isn't really hurtful, but VERY cringe-worthy and melodramatic). Instead, I use a password-protected app on my phone.
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Here's my rule of thumb - don't ever write anything down if it would REALLY, really bother you if someone else read it.
I had a friend in high school whose diary got passed around the school, and that was enough for me! Lesson learned!
That includes everything. Notes to self, emails to others, etc.
I sense you are planning to write very hurtful things about people you love - don't do it. If you are adding to this journal very frequently, you're going to get a little careless and someone will see it. Because they unexpectedly came into the room while you're writing, you leave it on the desktop, you email it to the wrong address, etc.
I have, in the past, written things down and then destroyed them, as a way to forgive and let go. But there's no way I would leave something I know will hurt someone I love if they discover it. Ooh ouch.
I'll have to try those....especially the last one about font color, less work.
This is a long shot, but do you by any chance know a language that people in your household do not? At one point I kept a diary when I was living with someone - didn't mention it, didn't display it, and then one day opened it to find that it had been annotated by the other person.
Years later I was sharing an apartment with someone with whom I had no romantic or sexual relationship, but I kept my notes in a foreign language that was not well known, and not by the apartment mate.
Here's my rule of thumb - don't ever write anything down if it would REALLY, really bother you if someone else read it.
I had a friend in high school whose diary got passed around the school, and that was enough for me! Lesson learned!
That includes everything. Notes to self, emails to others, etc.
I sense you are planning to write very hurtful things about people you love - don't do it. If you are adding to this journal very frequently, you're going to get a little careless and someone will see it. Because they unexpectedly came into the room while you're writing, you leave it on the desktop, you email it to the wrong address, etc.
I have, in the past, written things down and then destroyed them, as a way to forgive and let go. But there's no way I would leave something I know will hurt someone I love if they discover it. Ooh ouch.
That's why I write in abstract.
A lot of words that reference to something but only I know what those references are. There is no index, no glossary written down anywhere.
Ie, "The BW's. Today's multiple failures , is everyone out there so flaky or is this Divine Intervention? Either, it would seem to be, is a possible conclusion. Could such bad luck exist ... or do I just have the wonderful fortune to be engaging all the bad ones in this sector?
And if it is Divine Intervention, if it is truly that, then shouldn't I sit up and take notice? Of course, it's not that I'm too stupid to do so but rather, as always, too entrapped in desire, in an alternate universe of being, to do so.
Faced with that which will physically & operationally destroy me on one side and what denial, turning my back on that (which) is me which could produce a total system cascade harmonic sympathetic failure, it is not a situation with easy choices and Divine Intervention is only saying what paths I cannot take."
Now that passage above is rather clear to me, even after a year of being written, but to someone in the unknown, without knowing what things certain words refer to, it is well written gibberish.
It's like Star Trek: The Next Generation with "Darmok"......just that it is not that easy to decipher.
The stuff wouldn't be allegations or dramatic like abuse or anything. But still things can be hurtful.
For example, I have a brother who can't get his act together. Even though he's doing his best. Well, after 30 years of a rocky love-hate kind of marriage (he's 54) I still can't believe he can't pay his bills on time.....so I might write about that (if something happens regarding that). One month the electricity is cut off. The next month it's the cable. But he can buy things, his kids don't technically need. Yes, I might write about that. So I mean that kind of hurtful. The kind that if you were having a conversation with the person you won't say -- because it's like kicking a person when they're down and you don't do that to people you love But certainly not anything like unknown abuse or hateful....
I suppose you could say well, just write about yourself, not other people. But, other people are in your life, and if you're pis sed about something they did you should be able to write about that. One could also just say " a situation happened today that..." and keep it vague but IF I'm going to write it I'm not going to edit myself. I should be able to write what I want and feel.
The stuff wouldn't be allegations or dramatic like abuse or anything. But still things can be hurtful.
For example, I have a brother who can't get his act together. Even though he's doing his best. Well, after 30 years of a rocky love-hate kind of marriage (he's 54) I still can't believe he can't pay his bills on time.....so I might write about that (if something happens regarding that). One month the electricity is cut off. The next month it's the cable. But he can buy things, his kids don't technically need. Yes, I might write about that. So I mean that kind of hurtful. The kind that if you were having a conversation with the person you won't say -- because it's like kicking a person when they're down and you don't do that to people you love But certainly not anything like unknown abuse or hateful....
I suppose you could say well, just write about yourself, not other people. But, other people are in your life, and if you're pis sed about something they did you should be able to write about that. One could also just say " a situation happened today that..." and keep it vague but IF I'm going to write it I'm not going to edit myself. I should be able to write what I want and feel.
Abstractly, I might assign such a person an identifier as "Loki" and hereafter use that as reference to them. As it is, I have a brother who is sort of like that, a cad, but if I really wanted to distance the identifier, then I would go for a famous identified that could wrap a lot of it up in one word.
This concept of abstract writing may come from my 20's when I was looking for ways to define myself....and I found a thesaurus.
Equally, when I write about myself....which in a diary is practically page to page.....it may shift from who I feel more like in that moment, such as Atalanta or Freya. The latter, for example, is how I rather felt upon this awakening, doing full ballet plies in the kitchen to pet this or that cat. I am being a little creative to throw the abstract into my writing here as a demonstration.
By the way, someone earlier asked if you wrote music. Songs like HEART's "If Looks Could Kill" or "Magic Man" are derived directly from incidents in the Wilson sisters' lives.
You might pick your words to see situations from another person's viewpoint. As it is said in "Star Wars", "the truth from a certain point of view", or write things in another's interpretation. In my life, I have 7 scenarios which show a demonstration of that. Won't address all of them here but these are famous people from literature seen from another point of view.
A fair haired little girl who has no respect for the property of others:
Spoiler
Goldilocks
A farm girl, obviously playing the innocent, who between her and weird friends, goes around killing old women.
Spoiler
Dorthy in the Wizard of Oz
A vigilante who in his relentless pursuit of evil constantly places a minor in danger.
Spoiler
Batman
It is another way to hide the meaning from direct observation.
Long story short and speaking a little figuratively, if they, whoever that may be, come across my diaries and if they can read my handwriting (that's another defense against doing them with a key board), then it may take them twenty years or a century of psychologists to figure out my madness.
And with that, I have to get off this infernal device and prepare myself to face the distant east.
^^ But you didn't HAVE to read the letter. Sure you were going through her things after death. I have had to do this also. It doesn't' take reading an entire letter to realize what your reading may not have been for your eyes to see. You chose to finish reading it.
I found some of my mom's letters. Not knowing what they contained, I took a deep breath before reading them. I could have stopped reading at anytime. But I didn't.
You, me or anyone else. Once you find out something about a person AFTER they're already dead, you have to ask yourself how to I process this information? The person is gone. People mentioned in the letter may still be alive. You've read something you never should have seen. I think you find a way to deal with it yourself, keep it to yourself. And move on.
In many ways having read the letter was helpful. I understood that the enmity that often characterized my wife's and my mother's relationship was almost entirely on my mother; that there was nothing I could have done to smooth the waters.
To my wife's everlasting credit she maintained a good relationship with my mother after mine frayed over my need to take away the car keys. That despite my mother's previous obvious dislike of my wife.
I went to school with a guy who kept a diary using a stenotype (specifically a very old mechanical Stenograph machine). He found it at a swap meet, and had taught himself how to type on it. He'd keep it in book form by taking the printed tape (basically a register tape printed mechanically in the Stenograph's phonetic shorthand code) and scotch-taping it in strips to pages in a binder. It kept casual snoopery at bay, since to Average Joe it looks like random-letter jibberish. It worked pretty well, except when his auntie was over: she was a court reporter.
When I was helping him move apartments ~10 years ago I came across one of his binders and he explained it to me. Specifically the one I found was his "fiction file", wild, often lurid tales frequently involving sex, murder, jungle adventures, drugs, talking animals, fatal blood diseases and such. He actually tried to get it published as a volume some years back but gave up for whatever reason.
First, I know this is an old thread brought back to the front page today by a previous poster, but it seems like there needs to be a thread about writing in a diary or a journal.
I would strongly recommend we all do it and to do it by however it makes sense to us. I jeep mine in a Word document lately. It's password protected because I started it when my son lived with me. I didn't really think he's going snooping around, but it's helpful anyway. I lso password protected several stories I would work on pre-divorce when the kids were smaller, because you never knew.
I know some folks believe in actually writing in a journal. My ex still writes in a journal I gave her a long time ago. For some, the actual writing is very cathartic. I get bad carpal tunnel syndrome is I write too much so typing is easier for me. I'll use Notepad on my phone if I don't have ny computer but am not against writing notes with pen on paper either. Just notes though. Nothing drawn out.
Even with the passwording I do, I also share a lot on Facebook about my struggles with depression, anxiety and being a right leg amputee. My ex half jokingly said she would spread some of my dirty laundry around for folks to see but knew that if she just waited long enough, I'd eventually post it myself. It helps when people tell me they think it's good I share so much. Some call it courageous or brave although I bristle when they use those words. I get a lot of private messages from folks I never would have known were suffering otherwise. It help to know I am not alone.
Although one of my favorite Facebook status updates is "We're all in this alone!"
I would encourage all to keep a journal. Kep it hidden or password protected if you must, but keep it. I'd also encourage you to keep it after you have written. I am feeling pretty depressed here lately, but it helped when I went back and read some entries from this time last year when I realized that as bad as I feel right now, I feel better than I did then. Seeing it in black and white really helped.
and be honest in your diary or journal. If someone reads it without your approval and gets butthurt about it, that's on them, not you.
People often tell me I could write an interesting autobiography but I find writing about myself that much is boring. It's one thing to share a good story about some life event but actually writing down thoughts/processes feels tedious. Counselors have suggested journaling in the past but it never caught my interest. I'd rather spend the time and mental energy NOT being so self-absorbed. To each his own. If it helps someone to journal glad to hear they found the right outlet for their thoughts.
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