Dear Diary,

I read a book!
You can stop applauding!
I honestly can and do read…sometimes…
Anyway…I read a book…and agreed with something…get a grip and stay still for what I’m about to post:

I’ve heard that when one wrights in a diary, they are secretly hoping that it will someday be read and appreciated by others. But have you actually ever read anyone’s diary? I doubt it, because they are unreadable. If life is a meal, then diaries are the toilets in witch we shit out its vile remnants. They are litanies of complaints, grandiosity, and self-pity. There’s always the occasional happy entry, but they tend to be more beef. If my experience is any guide, the vary act of sitting alone in a room writing…flues misery! If you are happy you probably don’t have time to write for long periods because you’re somewhere barbecuing or having sex or whatever…Regardless of the tone of the entries, what diaries never contain is an interesting story, what people actually like to read!
I believe that diary entries are not written to be read. They're written to be written and then to be put in a drawer, eventually to be discovered by one's grandchild after one's death. At which point the kid will say, "Wow, I cannot wait to learn more about my grandparent by reading her diary entries, I bet they are fascinating." At that juncture, the grandchild will put the old diary in a box and go off to live her own life of self-created drama and, finally, will set pen to paper of her own diary, thinking she's commemorating the great drama of her life, when in reality she's recording only the most boring aspects of it. Unvisited tombstones, unread diaries, and erased video-game high-score rankings are three of the most potent symbols of mankind's pathetic and fruitless attempts at immortality. Not to be negative.

Ultimately, diaries are to writing what masturbation is to sex. The thoughts and fantasies that go through one's mind wind up in a tangible form, either on a sheet of paper or a sheet on your bed, and they should be quietly disposed of.
I should say that I'm mostly talking about the diaries of teenage girls. Teenage boys' diaries are different. They tend to read thusly:Dear Diary:I've been feeling so--oh, oops, look at this, I'm writing in a diary. So I guess that settles it: I'm gay. Thanks, Diary!

I tried writing my first diary entry as an actual grown-up, with an appropriately adult sense of perspective and balance.Needless to say, the exercise proved my theory: It's impossible to write a good diary entry. There's no storytelling in the whatsoever.
I began to get depressed. I strive to be a healthy, self-aware, fully actualized woman, and it seemed to me that reading what I wrote as a child was a critical step along the path to understanding myself. But there was just no fucking way I could read that garbage. Life is too short to be immersed in drab, repetitive prose that goes nowhere.

But unreadable prose is not the most shameful result of keeping a diary. It's also an extended lesson in becoming a stalker. Little girls spend their childhood composing countless passionate letters to a recipient who never once writes them back.


etc...next tine...