If this is not the proper forum to post this in, I apologize in advance and will post to this topic in the correct subforum in the future if someone will give me some direction. I did search up and down the subforum list, but couldn't find a fit. Perhaps someone will create a place to discuss the fascinating hobby of collecting the writings of other people.
I have been collecting letters, journals, (especially travel journals), diaries, missives, and other personal papers for about 20 years now. Some of the most interesting are a series of WW II love letters between a young man and his fiance (they were later married and the correspondence continued until the war's end) to a series of journals from a young woman in college documenting just about everything you can imagine including her mental struggles with what we call "bipolar disorder" today.
Please let me know if there is a place to start a discussion on this subject if we have one and if not perhaps one could be created.
Below is a bit of my history and reasoning as to why I see this pursuit as worthwhile.
I remember as a boy of about 12 exploring an old house that was being demolished in our neighborhood and finding an old journal in the attic dust written in pencil. I believe the dates were in the 1920s and 30s and I recall being astonished at how well preserved the author's thoughts were even though they were in pencil on yellowed paper. I also remember the author.* Even today 5 decades later. I didn't know the author personally, but I knew of their lives. And even many years later I remember them.
I was in London some 20 years ago and picked up a small personal pocket journal at an antiques street market. As I later read through the journal I realized that the young lady who penned it did so many times while hiding in the Tube during the Blitz of London in WWII. She would give her account of being terrified while hearing and feeling the rumbling of the bombs dropping overhead only to later on the same night write of going to the movies with her boyfriend if their neighborhood was beyond the borders of devastation. I think that was common in those days. To be bombed one hour and to be at the movies the next hour. I remember as I read through the small journal occasionally seeing white grit and dust fall out of it as I turned the pages and thought it had been stored horribly over the years. Only to realize later that the grit and powder falling out of the journal was what was caught in the pages from the ceiling of the Tube as this young lady wrote upon those pages the terrors of the bombings she was experiencing. I still have that journal and I still remember that young lady and the parts of her life she shared.
If you want your life remembered, you should not leave it to the memories of others. But should take the time to invest your life onto the pages of a journal that someone, somewhere, will certainly pick up at some time and will remember you even though they never met you.
I don't suppose there are many of us that have lived more than a few decades that do not look back over our shoulders and stand aghast at the ever-quickening movement of time. This is why I believe it imperative; if you want your life to be remembered you should write it down for others to read.
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