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my diaries
Sep. 4th, 2002 11:03 am[reposted from DiaryLand]
The difference between school and real life is that real life has no curriculum. In school, classes have prerequisites and assignments: you know, more or less, what you need to do next. Real life is not so clear cut. This morning a man from the place I was going to take my Linux class called to say that the class was cancelled, because I was the only person enrolled. So I've got to decide whether to get a refund or take a different class.
I used up the last page of my paper-and-pen diary Monday night. Chris read the public one over the weekend, and asked about the reason for keeping a diary. I guess the purpose of any diary is self-expression. If the self is the only audience, self-expression can be used only for better understanding of the self. I find that by writing about an issue that's been on my mind, I straighten it out in my head. With a public diary, there is a secondary purpose: communication. I hope for my parents, grandparents, friends, brother, and especially my boyfriend to read my blog; I want to say things here that maybe I forget to bring up in conversation, or deem too unimportant, too vague, or too something to talk about. Of course, having an audience limits my subject matter: I don't want to talk about my readers much. Only the paper-and-pen diary provides a place for that. But that's not the only reason for hanging onto it. I read my old entries, occasionally. I haven't much with the web diary because it's less than a year old. But I've been keeping paper diaries since fourth grade -- third, if you count the single page I scrawled that New Year. It's... humbling, to go back and read what my concerns were years ago, to see how I've grown and how I haven't. And I wouldn't want to have to fuss with booting up a computer to be able to do that. Handwriting is both quicker and more personal. The same goes for photographs: I may someday get a digital camera, but it won't make my photo album obsolete.
Yesterday I went shopping for a new diary. I couldn't find one that I liked a lot. The two I've used so far I got for my eighth birthday, and I used the larger one first; it had pastel pages and pastel hearts on the cover. :p Then I was left with the smaller one to use up, the one about four inches tall with "private! keep out!" printed on the cover. By that time I was 17. So yesterday I was hoping to get something a little more mature-looking... but also pretty, and in one of my favorite colors. I like hardcover, not spiral bound, and I like lined pages, so that ruled out a few I might otherwise have picked. Impressionist paintings or botanical prints on the cover are kind of pretty, but not me enough. I finally settled on a 5x7 inch hardback with a plain red cover, and I plain to cover it with a shimmery red and blue fabric I bought yesterday. I know nothing about the correct procedure for covering books with fabric, so we'll see how that goes.
The difference between school and real life is that real life has no curriculum. In school, classes have prerequisites and assignments: you know, more or less, what you need to do next. Real life is not so clear cut. This morning a man from the place I was going to take my Linux class called to say that the class was cancelled, because I was the only person enrolled. So I've got to decide whether to get a refund or take a different class.
I used up the last page of my paper-and-pen diary Monday night. Chris read the public one over the weekend, and asked about the reason for keeping a diary. I guess the purpose of any diary is self-expression. If the self is the only audience, self-expression can be used only for better understanding of the self. I find that by writing about an issue that's been on my mind, I straighten it out in my head. With a public diary, there is a secondary purpose: communication. I hope for my parents, grandparents, friends, brother, and especially my boyfriend to read my blog; I want to say things here that maybe I forget to bring up in conversation, or deem too unimportant, too vague, or too something to talk about. Of course, having an audience limits my subject matter: I don't want to talk about my readers much. Only the paper-and-pen diary provides a place for that. But that's not the only reason for hanging onto it. I read my old entries, occasionally. I haven't much with the web diary because it's less than a year old. But I've been keeping paper diaries since fourth grade -- third, if you count the single page I scrawled that New Year. It's... humbling, to go back and read what my concerns were years ago, to see how I've grown and how I haven't. And I wouldn't want to have to fuss with booting up a computer to be able to do that. Handwriting is both quicker and more personal. The same goes for photographs: I may someday get a digital camera, but it won't make my photo album obsolete.
Yesterday I went shopping for a new diary. I couldn't find one that I liked a lot. The two I've used so far I got for my eighth birthday, and I used the larger one first; it had pastel pages and pastel hearts on the cover. :p Then I was left with the smaller one to use up, the one about four inches tall with "private! keep out!" printed on the cover. By that time I was 17. So yesterday I was hoping to get something a little more mature-looking... but also pretty, and in one of my favorite colors. I like hardcover, not spiral bound, and I like lined pages, so that ruled out a few I might otherwise have picked. Impressionist paintings or botanical prints on the cover are kind of pretty, but not me enough. I finally settled on a 5x7 inch hardback with a plain red cover, and I plain to cover it with a shimmery red and blue fabric I bought yesterday. I know nothing about the correct procedure for covering books with fabric, so we'll see how that goes.