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Did anyone keep a journal when they were young? I did! After a comment someone said on FB today, I got out my journal which I started writing when I was 16. The first entry is below, errors and all! I was not quite so blunt as I pretended to be, but my bluntness did get me into trouble now and then.

June 5, 1969

Today I started a letter with “Sorry I haven’t wrote you before this” but I didn’t finish the letter. I wasn’t sorry that I hadn’t wrote, so why say a stupid thing if I didn’t mean it. Next I probaly [sic] would have said “I was too busy.” Why make excuses? No one is too busy to something they really want to. I try not to be a hypocrite, I hate hypocrisy, I don’t say things I don’t mean unless I am trying to wriggle out of something. God says to “Do until others as you would . . .” yet he says, “don’t lie,” so what do you do when someone puts you on the spot? Tell them the truth and hurt their feelings or tell a “little white lie”? I tell the truth, even if it hurts. If someone wants other person to them that their dress is pretty for their own vanity, and I don’t like it, they had better not ask me.

Gwendolyn2018 9 Sep 24
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6 comments

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Also, your dress isn’t pretty… ha ha. No, I really appreciate your honesty. I should be so honest.

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I’m sure I tried a couple of times to keep a diary, but never really succeeded; however, your very mention of the subject brought to mind at least one entry. Something regarding a ventriloquist dummy I think, but that’s about all I can remember. I always wanted a ventriloquist dummy, so it stands to reason I wrote something about it. Thank you, Gwendolyn, for jogging my memory.

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I don't remember being "young'' or having a journal.

@Gwendolyn2018 I don't think I'll be going down to the pond to catch frogs. Although I did go crayfish hunting about ten years ago.

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In my 20's and 30's I kept a dream journal for several years which awakened many fascinating settings which I'd never seen before. I used some of those images to write poetry. Since then my journal writing took the form of college assignments in comparative literature. After that I did a lot of introspection for psych courses I was taking. Since being retired I haven't done much of that. That is partly why I use agnostic and twitter. Also, I write letters to the editors short op-ed articles for newspapers near me. I have written my observations and testified publicly several times before the Hawaii legislature ... Mostly about environmental or climate change information or bills I either do or don't agree with. I get involved because it keeps me from getting bored.

@Gwendolyn2018
I wonder whether you've noticed whether the ability of college students to think has diminished during 20 years.

@Gwendolyn2018
That failure of our schools is dangerous and very alarming. I'm glad you are teaching how to be logical.

@Gwendolyn2018
Yes they are incapable of understanding why the Bible is not the ultimate source. No wonder thousands of books are being destroyed all over the US. When will the insanity and madness end?

@Gwendolyn2018
To me those responses or lack thereof seem very discouraging for the future of human evolution. How do you keep on dedicating yourself to this battle to educate people to learn to think?

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I have volumes which I wrote as a teen and into my twenties. I chronicled most of the things that happened in my life, as well as musical and philosophical observations, doodles, poetry, etc. After college, I got too busy to continue, but it might be fun again.

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I have kept a journal off and on for most of my 30s and beyond. I shredded a bunch of them at one time. I also used to do long Xmas letters. Reading some of the old letters was what prompted me to start the end of my marriage. I now have a journal app on my tablet that I started the day I lost my job at the hospital billing office at the start of the pandemic. Then I pulled out all the old journals I had and transcribed those into the journal app. I had one of Oprah's Journals of Daily Renewal which she was selling when she was on her fitness kick with that trainer dude. I have written in my journal nearly every day (I think I skipped two days) since June 10, 2020. That journal has 1262 entries as of last night.

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