Dear Diary

I've never been any good at this diary thing. My first diary (ages 9-11) was purchased simply because it had a cute key that went to a tiny lock that supposedly would protect my deepest, brightest thoughts. Five pages in I came to the realization that, in truth, all I wanted was for my little sister to steal the key and peek (then run and tell my Mom). Maybe then I would be understood. And I made it easy. The key was never more than three feet away from the diary and that little book was always placed in a 'pleeease open me' location, on my bed, on top of the nightstand, on my sister's bed (I was beginning to get desperate).

Whether or not anyone looked through the window of my 10 year old soul, I don't know, but the confrontation that would allow me to express my dramatic self never materialized and that was the end of diary #1.

The flowery padding that covered diary #2 (ages 15-17) got me back on track. I couldn't help it. Every time I picked it up it was soft and squooshed in my hand. A textural thing. High school years demand the recording of teenage angst. It was less of a diary and more a listing of what I thought were fantastic quotes and poems, some original and some that I thought were original but not having been of the world enough to know that they had been around a long time. Still, I loved my quotes.

AP English taught me two things, 1. how to dissect poems 2. I'm not a writer. A review of squooshy diary #2 is case in point. I keep that diary just to prove to my sons that you are stupid at 16 no matter how smart you think you are.

But it's not the writing that made me persevere. It's that 'pleeeease sneak a peak so that I can show you who I am without having to come right out and tell you'. Enter diary #3 (age 19). I guess technically diary #2 but really, after dropping it for two years, I was starting again. No surprise, not too successful at keeping it up. Apparently, I only went scribbling when I was seriously moody. Some of the jottings are so embarrassing I've often contemplated throwing it out. I keep it for one reason only. At one point, I was upset that I was fat. 117lbs. Yup, it's a keeper. I can prove that at one point in my 'adult' life, I weighed 117lbs.

#4 came almost 10 years later after an obsessive search for a beautiful leather bound journal. I was on the Oprah gratitude journal kick. What a novel idea. If gratitude wasn't natural to my inherently whiny nature, then by God I was going to force feed it to myself until I changed. Finding five things to be grateful for was a lot harder than it seemed. Several days I was grateful for the air, food, my husband, a job, and, and, one more thing, can't even remember.

I must have been a little more than, uh, grateful, for my husband. Enter two boys. And the end of sticking to any journaling, diary, etc. I wasn't even all that great at recording things in their baby books. Yet for some reason, here I am again, unable to shake this obsessive need to jot down life's little moments, no doubt more as fodder for a good laugh in later years.

Blogs can be many things, but to me, they look an awful lot like a little diary with the cute lock and a world sneaky enough to take a peek.