Diaries and journals can be very personal documents so it can be hard to think about who to trust with them. I’ve seen several comments from people saying their diaries are boring or too personal so they have either destroyed or plan to destroy them because they don’t want anyone to read them, (you can see some comments on my post 15 ideas for old diaries and journals).
This really bothers me because I think of all the social history that will be lost, for example by reading my diaries from 25 years ago I’m noticing the significant difference between my school days and what my children are experiencing. And just think about how much we know of everyday life in the 1600s because of Samuel Pepys’ diary*. Some people have said hard copy records don’t matter now in the digital age because there is so much material on the internet, but I know I write differently on and offline, and I suspect at some level everyone does. And there is also the concern about obsolescent, will people be able to access all those internet records in the future?
So if I was to tempt you to pass your diaries, journals or notebooks on to someone, who would you trust?
- Family member – but will they value them, and could they change their view of you
- Organisation – donate them to a library or archive
- Lawyer – leave them with instructions so they can be read a certain number of years in the future
- No one – keep them hidden
- Yourself – edit your diaries and prepare them for publications
One of the biggest unknowns I have is what would I like to happen to my diaries in the future. Would I like them published? Would I like to be involved in the editing process? Would I like them published during the potential lifetime of people who are mentioned? If I could answer those I think I would be happier trusting someone else with my diaries because I’d be able to give them guidance so I would not be relying on them to make decisions in my place.
For now, all my diaries will be left to my husband as I trust him and he has said he’d like to have them; although I don’t know what he would do with them apart from showing them to our children.
So who will you trust with your journals? Do you have a plan for your diaries and journals? Do you intend to trust someone with them or destroy them?
I'm a working mum of two children, and I'm keen to make the most of what is important to me. This starts by capturing information whether it is a photograph or a task list. I love a process and try to find the most efficient method of doing things from organising photographs to planning a house renovation. I believe everything benefits from being simpler.
My teenage diaries are hidden in a box in the wardrobe, I hope that no-one else reads them in my lifetime! I honestly don’t know what I’d like to happen to them. My husband wouldn’t throw them out, but I don’t think he’d be that interested in them. Perhaps my children would be, although there’s a lot of embarrassing teenage angst in there from what I remember (I’ve not read through them since I wrote them almost 20 years ago, I can’t bear to!) They are in no way worthy of being published, but I suppose bits of them might be interesting to other people in the future, I wrote quite a lot each day so there must be something worth reading in there somewhere!
I do keep a daily diary of just a few lines but to be honest that’s just for me, it’s things that I want to remember. I like to think that my separate detailed travel journals would be of interest to the children one day, and of course my blog, which has replaced my long diary!
I agree that I don’t know if my husband or children will be interested in reading my diaries, but in 100 years they could provide people with a fascinating insight into our time. I just don’t know what you do with them until then. I haven’t looked back on mine before which is why I started reading them after 25 years as I thought it would motivated me to keep going (I’m currently in a patch when I didn’t write). It has been enjoyable up to now, but I suspect it is going to get a lot more angsty as I remember a lot of falling out with school friends.
I just read through one from the late 90s and that thing is going in the recycle bin! It is about the most depressing thing I’ve ever read! I have others elsewhere but I need to round them up to decide on them. They were written at various times in the past 12 years or so. If they are as depressing as the one being recycled, They are going out, too!
I’m a little apprehensive about reading my diaries from the 1990s, as my expectation is it will be full of how horrible my life was and how mean people were to me. I don’t think I’ll be keen on my attitude at the time. Did you come across any bits that were interesting? Because you could always rewrite those bits in a new book and keep a condensed version of just the interesting bits.