Did you keep your old diaries from your childhood?
By Porcospino
@Porcospino (31366)
Denmark
February 17, 2012 7:18pm CST
Did you have a diary when you were a child or a teenager? Did you keep it and reread it when you were older? What do think about the things that you wrote when you were younger?
I haven't kept my oldest diaries, but I reread them before threw them away. My diary from the time when I was 11 wasn't very interesting, it was just short descriptions of my days and my activities. My diary from the time when I was 13 and 14 was hilarious. I laughed so much when I reread it, I was sulking or angry when I didn't get my way and I was self-centred and childish
I see the things that I wrote about in a totally different light today, and it was fun to read about those things seen from a teenager's perspective.
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5 people like this
31 responses
@beamer88 (4259)
• Philippines
18 Feb 12
I actually started keeping a journal-type diary after I graduated from college. It's where I jotted down significant things or milestones and also my plans and stuff. It's actually an open-ended journal, not an annual type of thing, and I use it sometimes as some sort of reference when I'm faced with a similar situation. In retrospect, I think it would've been fun to have kept one during my teens and read how immature I was back then.
3 people like this
@Porcospino (31366)
• Denmark
18 Feb 12
Yes, it can be funny to read those things as an adult. My old diaries really made me laugh when I read them again after a long, long time. I didn't keep those diaries, but I enjoyed reading them before I threw them away. As an adult I also keep a diary, I don't write every day or every week, but sometimes I like to write about my thoughts and my experiences. The journal that you keep sounds like a useful thing, sometimes it is nice to have something that you can use as reference when you experience something similar.
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@itsmejuna08 (83)
•
18 Feb 12
No, I don't have it any longer. I threw it after my mom has secretly read it. Right now, I am not writing on a diary anymore for the reason that my mother might catch it and read it. That would be very embarrassing.
Well, before, I used to write my daily activities and my feelings. My writings are mostly about my feelings when I am with my crush--- what happened, where did we go, what did he told me, everything!
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@Porcospino (31366)
• Denmark
18 Feb 12
I don't live with my parents anymore, but I used to be afraid that my mother would do the same thing as your mother and read my diary when I was away from home. I don't think that she ever found my diary, or if she did I have never found out, but I can easily imagine how you felt when your mother read your diary. Some things you just want to keep private, and a diary is only meant for the person who writes it. Today I also keep a diary, but my husband has never touched it, and I hope that he never will, because I want to keep it private.
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@itsmejuna08 (83)
•
18 Feb 12
That's good to hear Porcospino. I prefer telling my secrets to my boyfriend, who at the same time my bestfriend. I think I don't have secrets or i'm not keeping one.. I share every details of my life with my boyfriend, mother, or friends and most especially to God.
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@anne25penn (3305)
• Philippines
18 Feb 12
My high school friends and I recently discovered our old diaries and cross checked the dates in order to know what we were doing twenty years ago. It's funny because a lot of our entries made us cringe and laugh so hard when we would recall about our crushes and how stupid our entries sound today. What's also funny is the way that we put importance on small things, such as exams or eating at a particular fast food chain.
I am looking for two more diaries that I filled from 1992 up to 1996. I would like to find it and read it because it was at this time that I started working and did miss out on a lot of activities my friends had. They were able to experience college life and I could not because I had to work to support my family. My friends know this that's why they asked me about this diary. They know also that I write a lot, so they know that I keep track of a lot of dates and happenings that we had during those times.
The fun thing also about keeping a diary is seeing how much you have changed and grown all those years. You can see it from the entries and what you now deem as important.
@Porcospino (31366)
• Denmark
18 Feb 12
That is true, it is fun to see how much we have changed since the time that we wrote the diary. When I reread my old diaries I laughed a lot, because my way of thinking was very different at that time and my perspective was often very immature and self-centred. I know that I wrote those things, but some of them seem a bit strange to me today where I am 20 years older.
It must have been fun to read your old diaries together with your friends. I have lost touch with most of my friends from elementary school and high school, and I don't know if they still have their diaries from that time.
2 people like this
@jndlponti (2402)
• Philippines
18 Feb 12
Yes I do. I still have them now, but whenever I read it I see the immature me in there. There were times that I had a diary that full of disappointment about my ex boyfriend that was when I was 15years old. I do not wanted to go back to that feeling so I throw that diary, what is left was those things that would remind me how happy I was Yesterdays.
@Porcospino (31366)
• Denmark
18 Feb 12
I understand why you didn't want to keep that diary. I also threw things away that brought back bad memories from the past. There was a certain period in my life where I was very unhappy and I don't really want to keep the memories from that time, I prefer to focus on the good memories and the things that happen today.
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@jndlponti (2402)
• Philippines
28 Mar 12
That is true... Sometimes there were just things that is meant to be just for our own memory to be kept and never to be seen anymore in writing to protect the feelings of the people we truly love.
2 people like this
@lovejca78 (53)
• Philippines
18 Feb 12
Yes I completely understand what you feel on reading your Diary! I also had one back when I was in elementary and Highschool. It was hilarious how I spend so much time thinking about boys and how they are perfect and how i am not! It is also funny to see all the mispelled words and the wrong grammar! hehe.
@Porcospino (31366)
• Denmark
18 Feb 12
Yes, the spelling mistakes and the grammar mistakes are also funny to see. Today I don't think much about grammar or spelling, I just write, but at that time many words were difficult to spell... When I reread my old diary I remembered the boys that I was in love with at that time. I was very insecure about my appearance and all those things and the big question was "Does he like me or not?"
Today I am married to another man, and I haven't seen any of those boys for years, but it was still fun to read my thought about them.
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@artauxeo (287)
• Philippines
18 Feb 12
haha.
i did make a diary before. but i made it different than the the usual diary that everyone has. instead of putting in sentences or paragraphs...
ehat i did is make it look like a comic strip.
i draw the highlight of the day. but too bad, i left that diary when we moved to a new place. someone kept the diary. after that, i didn't continue making comic journals.
3 people like this
@Porcospino (31366)
• Denmark
18 Feb 12
I hadn't heard about that before, but it sounds like a very creative way to make a diary, and I like the idea. I used to decorate my diary with drawings sometimes, but the words were the most important thing. I often wrote with different colours and I enjoyed decorating my diary in other ways, too. I didn't keep those diaries, because my parents moved many times and I wasn't able to bring all of my things when we moved to a new place.
2 people like this
@Porcospino (31366)
• Denmark
18 Feb 12
I have the same thought about my diaries. I threw away my first diaries, but in 1999 I started writing again and I keep those diaries. I am going on a long trip this year or next time and in case something happens to me while I am gone other people would find my diaries. I would feel really bad about that, because I have written about some things that I don't want other people to read. On the other hand I don't really want to destroy my diaries, because it is a nice way to remember the things that happened the past.
@derek_a (10874)
•
18 Feb 12
I always kept a diary from a very young age. It is a good way to find resolution and help to process our experiences from day to day living. Unfortunately those diaries are long gone. I rarely keep diaries very long these days once a new year has started. It is better now with computers as they can be kept and not take up any room..
_Derek
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@Porcospino (31366)
• Denmark
19 Feb 12
That is true, now that we have computers, it is easier to keep the things that we write and they don't take up a lot of room. I used to have so many notebooks and when I moved I just couldn't keep all of them, so I got rid of some of them. Like you I started keeping a diary when I was very young. In the beginning I just wrote about my daily activities, but later I starting writing about my thoughts as well. I know that I had a diary when I was 11, but I didn't keep it, and I didn't the diary that I wrote when I was in early teens either.
@yanzalong (18988)
• Indonesia
18 Feb 12
My childhood was not a technology era, so no diary was recorded. Now the era has come but I even haven't started writing it. I just can't do it regularly. When I miss something to write, I usually get lazy to write it again.
@Porcospino (31366)
• Denmark
19 Feb 12
I also grew up without technology like computers, and my diaries were written by hand. Today it is easy to write something on the computer instead of writing it by hand, but at that time that possibility didn't exist so I used handwritten notebooks instead. I had so many notebooks, because I really enjoyed writing. I had dream journals, diaries, notebooks with my poems and many other things, but I didn't keep those notebooks when I moved.
@Porcospino (31366)
• Denmark
21 Feb 12
No, I don't really know much about news articles or how to write them. When I was a teenager I actually thought about becoming a journalist, because I really like writing, but I decided to become a nurse instead. Today I still love writing, but I write poems and short stories instead of news articles. I think that there must be some journalists here on MyLot, maybe one them can give you some advice about the topic. You could start a discussion about that topic, and maybe some of the jounalists will respond ![](/Content/images/emotes/happy.gif)
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@yanzalong (18988)
• Indonesia
20 Feb 12
It seems to me that you like journalism. Have you learned how to write news writing for newspaper? I am interested in it. Maybe you can share or start a new discussion on it.
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@enelym001 (8322)
• Philippines
18 Feb 12
It sure is fun reading back our diaries. I started writing journals when I was in HishSchool. It was a school project which we have to write there daily. The problem is I wasn't able to write so on the day our prof asked us to submit it. I made up something only. It has to have moral lesson in the end. I made some a little longer but in between I kept some song lyrics to make it longer
After that I made my own personal diary. I didn't want anyone reading it even my professor of course. It's suppose to be my personal one, you know.
I lost it now, I think my mom had thrown those diaries away when you shifted house several times.
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@Porcospino (31366)
• Denmark
18 Feb 12
The story about the diary that you wrote at school made me smile. Did your professor discover that you had made it up? We had a similar school project once, but it was only one day that we had to write about, so that wasn't too hard. There was a national diary project in my country where people could send in their diaries for one day. I had read about the project, I didn't plan on participating, but our teacher told us that we all had to participate. He told us that he would read our diaries and then he would send them in. So I was "forced" to participate in the diary project ![](/Content/images/emotes/lol.gif)
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@enelym001 (8322)
• Philippines
18 Feb 12
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@enelym001 (8322)
• Philippines
18 Feb 12
Wow I have seen something like that in a movie. It's an amazing idea how one can really think of doing things like that. It's a great feeling to be part of that. Well who knows, one can learn many things if they happen to read your diary. I am sure there will be a lot of interesting thing you wrote in there.
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@Porcospino (31366)
• Denmark
18 Feb 12
That is great. I wish I could say the same things, but I don't have a very good memory and when I read my old diaries I discovered how many things I had forgotten. For me a diary is a way to remember the things that happened in the past and the thoughts that I had at that time.
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@Leocen (178)
• China
18 Feb 12
well,a very good discussion.
i threw my diaries from the time when i was 12~15 away.i reread it before i threw it~. it's very funny at that time,because those diaries was a homework that my chinese teacher made us so.i wrote some complaints on it,and i found my teacher's comments below.at that time i'm very straight,i wrote everything i thought i should write,i complainted about my math class was a waste of time,it's kinda useless;complaint our p.e.classes was often replaced by chemistry teacher during the finals,and etc.
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@Porcospino (31366)
• Denmark
18 Feb 12
I wonder what your teacher thought about the complaints that you wrote
I also had to write a diary for school, but my teacher didn't comment on the things I had written, he just corrected the mistakes. I was also very open about my thoughts when I was younger, and I wrote things about my brother that weren't very nice, but I didn't think about that. I just wrote down my honest thoughts. Today I can laugh about those things.
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@dorothy172 (984)
• Malaysia
18 Feb 12
Yes, i do keep my diary, until now i still keeping it with me. Sometimes i will reread it, and everytime when i reread my diary, i found funny with my thoughts at that time, why will i think like that? Haha...but it is really a great memory for me, so i keep on writing diary until today, and i wish when i getting old, i still can reread my diary when i was young. Happy mylotting
3 people like this
@Porcospino (31366)
• Denmark
18 Feb 12
I had the same feeling when I reread my old diaries. Sometimes I just couldn't believe that I had that kind of thoughts earlier in my life, and it made me realize how much I have changed since that time. I think it is great idea to keep your diary from your youth, that way you can read about your activities and your thoughts from that period when you are older. I didn't keep my oldest diaries, but I am going to keep the diary that I write today.
2 people like this
@Gloriabotao (2)
• China
18 Feb 12
i have the habit of keeping all the textbooks i studied . and i am sure there would be some of my old diaries in the piles of textbooks. one or two years ago , i cleared some of them out , i read one or two of them , as i read the first paragraph , i stopped and can figure out what was next. when i was in junior and high school , the main idea of my diaries was about study, describing the joy ,happiness, greif (main) during my study , especially after tests. and later, the topic swerved to love stories when i went to college . at that time love life was full of ups and downs, i felt unhappy ,but had no one to speak to ,and then i would turned to the diarybook. when i find my true love , i throw the diaries figuring out how innocent ,how fool i was .
@Porcospino (31366)
• Denmark
19 Feb 12
Hi and welcome to MyLot!
It sounds like you have had many diaries since you both wrote in high school and in college. I never wrote anything when I was in high school, but I started again some years after high school.
When I read my old diaries I also think that I sounded very innocent and naive. That is one of the things that made me laugh a lot when I reread the diaries as an adult. Today I have a lot more experience and of course I see everything in a different perspective today. Sometimes when I read those things I almost couldn't believe that I thought that way and felt that way, and it shows me how much I have changed.
@Porcospino (31366)
• Denmark
18 Feb 12
I haven't kept mine either, but I did read them again before I threw them away. In a way I think that it could have been fun to have them today, but I have moved many times and every time I got rid of my old things. I don't remember when I threw my old diaries away, but I know that it was several years ago. 13 years ago I started writing a diary again and this time and I plan on keeping them.
2 people like this
@maezee (41988)
• United States
22 Feb 12
I always had a diary back then. I have a diary from when I was 10, when I was 12 and 13, when I was 15, and then again when I was 18. When I was 10, my journal entries were silly. ("OMG - Aaron Carter is sooooooo cute") and stuff like that. It's kind of entertaining to read, but there's obviously nothing really interesting that a 10 year old writes about.
Like you, between the ages of 12-14 I was another angsty teenager, like you. My parents had a bad separation, mixed in with the regular teen angst garden variety of stuff (hating teachers, hating parents, hating homework, hating the government) - I don't like reading these journals because I am incredibly angry! All the time! I can't imagine being like that now.
Now that I've grown up - I do have a xanga - I am a lot better. My entries are seldom, but when I do write, it's a mixture of feelings and things that have happened and weird stories. Sometimes I get angry, but it's not an every day thing like it used to be during my teen years.
Sometimes it's funny to look back just to remind yourself how much you've changed over the years, though.
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@Porcospino (31366)
• Denmark
27 Feb 12
My diary from the time when I was 11 wasn't that interesting either. I didn't write much, I just described some of my activities and my friends. The diaries that you wrote when you were a teenager sound a lot like my diaries from that time. I was often very angry at my parents, and my diaries were full of angry comments about my parents etc. When I read those things as an adult I laughed a lot, because I see things in a very different light today. I am 35 now and a lot of things have changed since that time ![](/Content/images/emotes/lol.gif)
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@Porcospino (31366)
• Denmark
18 Feb 12
I understand that you have chosen not a write a diary again when you had that bad experience where your parents read your diary. I was worried that the same thing would happen to me and that my mother would read my diary. I always hid it, and I don't think that she found it, at least she never mentioned anything that I had written or scolded me for it. I think that some of things would have made her angry like the nights when my friends and I went out.
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@trinkabelle (432)
•
18 Feb 12
yes i have kept my diaries from when i was 7, i have them all in my garage, i even write diaries to this day, even if it's just a small insert, one day i may even get to write an autobiography
@Porcospino (31366)
• Denmark
20 Feb 12
If you want to write an autobiography one day your diaries will be a great help. Sometimes I wish that I had kept my first diaries like you have, but at least I read them again because I threw them away. It was funny to read them, because today I am 20 years older and I see things in a very different perspective. Do you ever read some of your diaries again?
@trinkabelle (432)
•
20 Feb 12
yes i do actually read them from time to time, if i go to my garage and often find one and sit and read, i even show my sons who are now in their 20's with their own children and they laugh about the things i did when i was a kid, because they reflect on them and tell me that they did similar things, uh, like i don't know LOL, i am their mum and best part of the time i knew what they were up to, even though they thought i didn't lol, but i kept every single one of them and i still write now, i can tell what mood i was in at the time because of my hand writing, but i do look back and have some fond memories, it's good to write about things that happen in your life.
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@thelmadacullo112659 (642)
• Philippines
18 Feb 12
No..sorry am not fun of having diaries since my childhoo.I remeber in elementery, we had an assignment about diary and we will write it all what we did on that day...I have it ,but i did not keep it for i passed it toour teacher...Until now ,i dont have any..
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@Porcospino (31366)
• Denmark
18 Feb 12
I got a similar assignment from my teacher when I was in elementary school. There was a national diary project in my country, and our teacher decided that we all had to participate in that project. I wrote about my daily activitites, and gave it to my teacher who corrected the mistakes and sent it to the diary project. I didn't keep a copy of the things that I wrote and I don't really remember what happened on the day that I described, I just remember that we all had to participate in the diary project.
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@Porcospino (31366)
• Denmark
18 Feb 12
I am sorry to hear about the fire, that must have been a scary experience. I didn't keep my diaries either, but that was because I moved so many times and had to get rid of some of my things.
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