For the longest time, “diaries” were way too feminine for me. In the mid- to late-1990s, a diary was something to which you confessed your deepest secrets. It was almost always pink, and came with a lock and key in front. Deposit your secrets here, please.
They were way too sentimental for my little androgynous self (though I didn’t know that what I identified as was called androgyny). I felt intimidated by these diaries. I wasn’t into dresses and gossiping about boys all the time—was journaling tied to the Girly Girl Culture too? If so, no thanks.
But that all changed when I found Amelia’s Notebook. The series was absolutely magic for me. The art was incredible, and took a gentler approach to storytelling than anything coming out of the American Girl brand at that time. It was one of the few graphic novels for children on the market at the time. It was also marketed to girls, which was huge.
More than anything, the Amelia’s Notebook series didn’t feel threatening to me. It was very far from the furry pink journals I was seeing in stationary stores everywhere in California at the time. This was a series that boys and girls could enjoy, because it was based on discussing life experiences anyone could relate to.
The character of Amelia was different. Nothing like those books was out at the time, which is probably why they became classics. But I couldn’t put my figure on how the books were so different. Then it hit me: Rather than approaching journaling as a cathartic exercise, these books treated it as personal art creation. It wasn’t sentimentality. It was creation.
After collecting all the editions of Amelia’s Notebook that I could find, I started journaling. I brought a serious attitude to it: old-school composition books, colored pencils, fountain pens, etc. I filled many of them with doodles and boxy caricatures of people I knew. I used the picture to express myself before I could find the words to do so. It was just art. My art.
With time, I turned to collage as self-expression. Then pencil sketching. Then coding. Today, I mostly write things for blogs and websites. I have no fear of using my own life experience to make a point, because that’s just how I make things. My confessions aren’t private. They’re materials. I use them to make art in some capacity, all the time.
This isn’t to say that people who use journaling for pure catharsis are wrong for doing so, or that being feminine is a bad thing. I wish I was able to do that style of journaling. I wish I could have that kind of intimacy with my journal, and not just see them as mounds of clay I can potentially mold into content/books/tweets. But it doesn’t feel natural to me.
I see journaling the same way I see making a sculpture: Take something from yourself and make something beautiful with it. It’s not about you. It’s about taking what you have and making something great from it. It’s a different approach to journaling, but it may end up being how more people find the way to this ancient writing tradition.
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