Down Memory Lane

[poliphilo]

I take down my paper diary and browse. I do this every once in a while. I think it will be amusing to drop in on my former self.  It never is.

It's more like wading through a morass.

Did I have a sense of humour in 1995? I certainly believed I did. But where's the evidence?

What makes the past such a gloomy place? I think it's the earnestness, the solemnity my past self displays in relation to things that just don't matter any more.

1995 is another century. Unreal. A world of ghosts.

Comments

[dadi.livejournal.com]

No, it is never amusing. The words that come to my mind reading my past diary, be it paper or LJ, are "pretentious", "full of shit", "ridiculous". And that makes me re-read stuff I am writing these days, trying to put myself in a future perspective. Oi oi.

[beeswing.livejournal.com]

A little while ago there was a meme going around where people would copy and paste sections from their old diaries, going back several years. It was really funny, actually, and I wished I'd been brave enough to do it.

But it's true — former selves are ghostly! Sometimes I find it hard to realise how I've changed over the years, and reading back old writing always gives a little shock as I realise how differently I saw things then.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

My piles of diaries probably need to be burned, if only to spare my children from ever reading about my impossibly immature adulthood in twenty-plus angst-filled volumes. And also to spare myself.

I can open up a page at random and be thrown into instant depression.

Yes! "It's tne earnestness, the solemnity my past self displays in relation to things that just don't matter any more."

And yet I never learn!

[solar-diablo.livejournal.com]

My paper journal is much the same. It just seems as though I had nothing to say unless I was pissed off/depressed.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

Depends on why you wrote. Which you discuss later on here.

I discover old notebooks with 'stuff' in them, but I don't believe I ever kept a journal with any regularity for any length of time. Journals aren't of any use to people who are hiding from themselves.

[iskaral.livejournal.com]

I have never really kept a diary I must confess, but in a similar vein I used to write little notes of litterally how I was feeling at a certain time. This was usually if the feeling was something bad, like I was bored. I would date them and write them in exercise books in not particular place.
The idea being I guess I could read back and reflect at a better time and maybe appreciate that time more.
This was a long long time ago, its strange how kids minds work.