Dear Queer Diary: So Long, Farewell

There’s something strange about ending a journal. For weeks, months, maybe even years, you’re writing — making lists and sketching kittens and recording quotations and keeping track of school and work and friendships and loves and then suddenly, you turn a page and there’s only a few lines left.

And depending on how big you write or how many words you use, you can finish your thought or your entry. But then you close your journal and put it on the bookshelf, and you know that the next time you look at it, things will have changed.

Those of us who have a bookshelf stacked with filled journals know that each notebook is a volume in a bigger archive — a chapter in the longer story of what came before and what comes after. There’s continuity because journals are about our days, and each day is followed by another and then another and then another, all the way through years and decades and maybe a century, if we’re very lucky.

(Via Diary of a Little Flower)

I strategically manipulated my high school diary to end with graduation: the final lines describe walking down the hallway with my best friend crying after we said goodbye to our favorite English teacher. It isn’t truly the final page of that red, soft-cover notebook. During the time I used that journal, I created multiple appendices centered on books I had read, movies I had watched, and a pro-con chart about whether or not I should take a gap year after high school (cons: “I’ll be 24 when I finish college!”; pros: “I’d have some time to reflect & define myself w/o some institutional molding.”).

In spite of these extraneous topics covered on the pages just inside the back cover of my notebook, the final page in the journal proper seemed to have a certain importance, and I can remember carefully measuring the space I had left and deciding how much detail to include in order to fit the most important bits. Even though I knew my life was far from over, I wanted that sense of an ending. The final words I wrote on June 3rd, 2008 were “Good night!”

(Via Feuillette)

Several years later, a journal from my semester abroad ends much more abruptly. There’s a list of expenses that includes 3 pounds 95 pence spent on mulled wine followed by these two lines, squished at the very bottom of the last page: “Oh my notebook! I have filled you up, I think, faster than any notebook before, and I have enjoyed our time together, both at home and in the great world abroad.” (Yes, I am aware my journal-writing voice is slightly out of the ordinary.)

The subsequent notebook ends, somewhat fittingly, it seems, in the form of directions from the New Haven line of the Metro North to Laguardia airport. I was flying home after my final semester of college, moving on from dorm rooms and dining hall meals into the simultaneously frightening and hopeful expanses of real life. At the end of this notebook, there are three empty pages. I can’t remember why I didn’t fill them in.

(Via Alkeemi)

A few months ago, I messaged about this very topic with a lovely Straddler by the name of Liz. For her, too, the ending of a journal is something significant: something that feels like it must coincide with major life events like break-ups and school years. Yet at the same time, she also feels the need to fill a notebook completely, leaving no page untouched. I sympathize with both of these inclinations.

In writing our lives, we look for meaning, giving our days, our passing fancies, our thoughts and desires the shape of a story, parsed out in sentences, pages, and entries. Whether we know it or we don’t, by writing, we give ourselves permanency, declaring with every mark on the page: “This is me! Here I am! Read! Listen!” In that sense, the larger project of a diary is never over. There will always be more notebooks waiting for the next entry, the next volume, the next cry of “Here I am!”

(Via Celestial Beings)

It’s not a coincidence that we’re talking about endings, my journaling geniuses: this is the fiftieth and final installment of Dear Queer Diary. But before we write off into our respective journaling sunsets, let us make a solemn vow. No matter how many journals we finish — or how many journals we don’t quite finish, but instead abandon for pretty girlfriends or new jobs or trips around the world — let us never stop beginning new notebooks, writing things down, and giving shape to queer lives in ink and on paper and on screens.

If you’re with me, put your hands on your hearts, link your pinkies, and uncap your pens. I have about four pages left in my current journal, and I promise to fill them with my all my dearest, queerest feelings.

Dear Queer Diary is a column about the joys (and occasionally, the pains) of journaling. We crack open our tiny notebooks and break out the rainbow-colored pens on the regular, so get ready to limber up your writing hands and document all your beautiful feelings!

Header by Rory Midhani

Dear Queer Diary: We Are What We Read

If there’s one thing I love more than journaling, it’s reading. And if journaling is a warm and crusty baguette, it seems like reading should be a nice wedge of Trader Joe’s brie — these are clearly a) two great tastes that taste great together and/or b) the ingredients for a night of extremely classy romance.

This outrageously attractive couple met at Trader Joe’s, and although I don’t know for a fact, I bet they love brie and journaling. (Via On A Bicycle Built for Two)

In any event, it should go without saying that when I am not journaling about my unrequited loves or questionable graduate school prospects, my pen has often turned to the books I have read, the books I am reading, and/or the books I hope to read next. I am sure you will not be surprised to learn that, if I wanted, I could even get a specially themed Moleskine for these ruminations—but for my purposes, my regular old notebook seems to work just fine.

Flipping through the pages of my past diaries, I find dozens of underlined titles scattered across the pages: everything from school assignments (Wuthering Heights, Wide Sargasso Sea, and A History of Women in America) to children’s classics (The View from Saturday and Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs). Perhaps you were wondering what I thought of Forever In Blue, the final installment in the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series? Don’t worry! I recorded my impressions in my journal back when I first read the book in March of 2007.

A beautiful journal made just for book-ing. (Via Julianna Swaney)

Pamela Paul, one of the editors of the New York Times Book Review, describes her longstanding relationship with “Bob,” her “book of books” that she has been keeping since 1988: “With 24 years of data, Bob reveals as much about my literary foibles, passing curiosities and guilty pleasures as any other diary.” It’s not hard to understand why. Those bibliophiles in our midst must agree that the books we read have an awful lot to say about how we are feeling and what we are doing—even if we don’t necessarily have a special journal to record our literary conquests.

Bob himself, beginning way back in 1988. (Via New York Times)

If I had started keeping track of my own reading adventures back in kindergarten, I wouldn’t be at Pamela Paul’s level for another few years still. Even at the ripe old age of twenty-something, I have trouble keeping a consistent record of the books I’m reading — I will make lists and then abandon them, begin elaborate rating systems and forget to continue using them, and start Goodreads accounts and then lose my password. Rather than offering complete archives that stretch across decades, my journals contain lots of lists like this one, from July 31st:

“Books I Have Read This Summer, in no particular order and with little regard for prestige and/or quality and/or importance: that picture book by Audrey Niffenger (sp?) about the suicidal librarian woman; Longbourn (so good!); Otherwise Engaged (a downright CSI-like Amanda Quick); Can’t & Won’t; This Is How You Lose Her, Junot Diaz; Never Let Me Go; The Rehearsal, by Eleanor Catton and I think that’s it. Is that it? I feel like I must have read more than that.”

It’s not just the (inevitably incomplete) lists that make my diary bookish. In fact, I am far more fascinated by the way what I am reading intersects with what I am doing in any particular phase of my life. On March 13th, 2008, in the throes of my high school’s A.P. English class, I wrote that, “During A period, I read To The Lighthouse aloud to Anna as we sat on the library balcony”; a little more than three years later, I wrote from a hostel in the Cotswolds about being “DEEPLY UPSET” upon discovering that “my copy of Fellowship of the Ring suddenly and unexpectedly skipped from page 128 to 225!”

The pages immediately prior to my tragic discovery.

Earlier that same semester, I contemplated the danger of checking out too many romance novels: “I am conflicted about whether I should go to the library and get more “fun” books out… I think it has an adverse effect on my study habits and lowers the stakes in my attempts at socialization — because such an attractive alternative is always available.” (You will, dear reader, be glad to know that I did eventually find a way to read books, make friends, and finish all my classwork.)

Are the pages of your journals festooned with book titles, my dear queer diarists? Or do you keep a separate list of every piece of literature you love? What at the habits of a great reader-journaler? Tell me your ways!

Dear Queer Diary is a column about the joys (and occasionally, the pains) of journaling. We crack open our tiny notebooks and break out the rainbow-colored pens on the regular, so get ready to limber up your writing hands and document all your beautiful feelings!

Header by Rory Midhani

Dear Queer Diary: Take This Quiz, Know Thyself

Back in the days when I was still dating boys, Facebook kindly alerted me to the fact that my then-romantic interest (who I shan’t dignify with the term “boyfriend”) had taken a quiz entitled “Which non-existent fruit are you?”

Although I have done my best to forget many other aspects of our relationship, I will always recall this moment as a kind of watershed — the moment when the outrageous internet quiz announced its presence to my cultural consciousness in a sudden foreshadowing of all that was to come. No longer just for tweens absorbed in the pages of women’s magazines (see: Now and Then), the quiz had entered a new era.

I am certain that you already know your Downton Abbey alter ego (I am proud to be Mrs. Hughes) and which lesbian icon corresponds to your personality (I am even more proud to be Gertrude Stein) — now is the time to discover who you are as a journaler.

You don’t even have to fill in any bubbles! (Via Huffington Post)

Due to my limited technological savvy, you are responsible for recording your own answers, so please, go find yourself a pencil.

1. You began journaling…

a) around the time you started finding yourself staring at girls in your pre-algebra class
b) as soon as you learned to hold a pencil/ballpoint/felt tip/quill pen
c) when you realized that high school was not actually all that similar to the musical Grease
d) after you read about its virtues in a self-help book

2. The pages of your journal are…

a) lined
b) adorned with pre-printed inspirational quotations
c) blank
d) graph paper

Graph paper: it’s not just for math class. (Via Deborah Lowe Alexander)

3. The cover of your journal features…

a) a letterpress print of a mustache, narwhal, or other icon of perfect quirkiness
b) a rising sun, Monet’s water lilies, and/or glitter
c) a purple- and gray-hued collage you crafted in your college’s art studio
d) the words “If lost, please return to,” followed by your name and telephone number

4. Your favorite place to journal is…

a) your bed, otherwise known as Pillow Island
b) the gorgeous verandah of the house where you are employed as an au pair for seven musically talented Swiss children
c) your neighborhood coffee haus, complete with exposed brick and tattooed baristas
d) your neatly organized desk, which you purchased at IKEA and admire for its clean Scandinavian design

Pictures of home offices have been known to make my knees weak. (Via Pretty Providence)

5. The majority of your journal contains…

a) exhaustive accounts of ALL THE FEELINGS
b) a list of all the things you’re thankful for, along with a strawberry scone recipe you tore out of Martha Stewart Living while sitting in the waiting room at the dentist’s office
c) angst-filled descriptions of your frequent romantic conquests, followed by equally angst-filled descriptions of your similarly frequent break-ups — all illustrated in a series of abstract black-and-white photographs
d) pro-con lists, which you use to make life decisions in a calm and rational manner

6. Whenever someone asks if they can read your journal, you…

a) blush furiously and mumble something about privacy
b) jump for joy at the opportunity to show off your latest purrito collage
c) glare at them until they retreat in terror
d) hand them your notebook with no fear — every entry is penned in an unbreakable code you developed in consultation with a cooperative CIA agent

Mostly As
You are a BEAUTIFUL BALL OF FEELINGS. If your emotions were a skein of multi-colored handspun yarn, your diary would be the oversized sweater you knitted using it. Writing about your feelings allows you to process effectively–but your mother has been known to accuse you of excessive wallowing now and then.

(Via All The Pretty Fibers)

Mostly Bs
You are a CUDDLY OPTIMIST. The sun shines from the pages of your diary, as you make plans, appreciate small victories, and pet every puppy that frolics past your apartment building. While some may find your eternal sunshine irritating, know that Pharrell and these ASL superstars approve of your happy journaling philosophy!

Most Cs
You are a DARKLY ARTISTIC SOUL. Your philosophy is that a journal is a place to express yourself — in any and every medium. While your ex-girlfriend may not have appreciated the series of sketches you devoted to documenting the development of her cold sore, you are confident that someday that series—and your entire collection of notebooks — will be on display in the galleries of the MoMa.

Mostly Ds
You are a BEACON OF RATIONALITY. For you, journaling is a means to the end of world domination. Other journalers admire your for your razor-sharp mind and excessively neat handwriting — and politely pretend they don’t know you have a Tumblr where you post cat videos and GIFs from Pretty Little Liars.

Let it be known that I would appreciate this statue more if it were of a lady. (Via Golly Gee)

Share your results, reactions, and quibbles in the comments! Did this highly scientific quiz get you all wrong? All right?

And if you can’t get enough of diary-related pseudo-psychoanalysis, take these vastly inferior journaling quizzes I found online.

Dear Queer Diary is a column about the joys (and occasionally, the pains) of journaling. We crack open our tiny notebooks and break out the rainbow-colored pens on the regular, so get ready to limber up your writing hands and document all your beautiful feelings!

Header by Rory Midhani

Dear Queer Diary: Two Journalers are Twice as Nice

The bad news, my dear queer diarists, is that Intergalactic Journaling Awareness Month is coming to an end. The good news is that it is coming to an end with not one, but two great interviews to inspire and inform you in all your journaling pursuits! With no further ado, allow me to introduce…

Mary

Mary recently graduated from college, and, like so many of us, is currently trying to figure out what she wants to do for the rest of her life. She lives in Tennessee, where she enjoys walking, biking, and reading. Recently, Mary has been particularly into historical fiction, so feel free to leave your book suggestions in the comments! (We already talked about Sarah Waters.)

Mary is a woman of mystery.

How long have you been a journaler? What’s your earliest journaling memory?

Well, when I was six years old, my parents started giving me an allowance for helping around the house. I saved up ten whole dollars and the first thing I bought was this fuzzy, pink Minnie Mouse diary with a lock on it.

Oh my gosh! That’s amazing! So you are a true journaler?

Yes. It was hideous, looking back on it. And I am sure the lock didn’t do any good — it was a piece of crap plastic one, and I think I just kept the key in my bedside table or something, right next to where I kept the diary.

Very high security! Do you have a favorite thing about journaling?

I like looking back on my old journals. I like writing in the moment, it’s relaxing to get my words out there, but I don’t like looking back on what I’ve written last week or last month. I really like looking back on what I’ve written a few years ago — just to think about how I’ve changed or what I was doing in 2008 or stuff like that.

Yes, there was at one point a Minnie Mouse Moleskine. (Via Blog of Shadows)

I like that too! Here’s a more philosophical question: do you feel like your journal is particularly informed by your queerness or your sexuality? Are there any connections there?

I definitely think so. I mean, your journal is a place where you write stuff that no one else can see. The thoughts inside your head are the most vivid, the thoughts you write in your journal are the next most. I didn’t even realize I was gay until I was eighteen or so, and recently after that, I was looking back at my old high school journals, and I had written about it, maybe wondering “Does this make me gay? What does this mean? Am I attracted to women? What’s going on?” There’s just this one, one-off journal entry, and I never really wrote anything else about it.

If you had to give a piece of journaling wisdom, what would you say to other journalers of the world?

Ooh, that’s a hard one! I don’t know. I guess it would just be that, even if at the time you don’t really want to journal, you’re probably going to thank yourself for it later. Because you’re going to feel better after you’ve done it, and it’s a healthier activity to do than other things you might do to deal with whatever’s going on.

Frances J.

Frances J. is an American expat, living in Tokyo, where she likes to visit traditional Japanese shrines and read children’s literature. She is a fan of Harry Potter and His Dark Materials, but also recommends Jacqueline Wilson’s Hetty Feather series and Ellen Renner’s Castle of Shadows to those who are looking to expand their children’s book reading. Because of the outrageous time change between the U.S. and Japan, I interviewed Frances over Skype chat whilst wearing my pajamas. She told me all about the virtues of LiveJournal, which she has been using since 2003, and invited you to become her LiveJournal friend by sending her a private message.

Here she is!

What is it about the medium of LiveJournal that attracts you?

At this point, it’s probably just out of habit. I’ve been updating the same blog for 10+ years. I don’t like my handwriting, so I never got into “fancy” notebooks. I really like the social aspect of it, too. It’s more like a ghost town now, but back in the day, I kept in touch with friends over LJ – “irl” and online. I still do, with a few people.

Nice! What is your favorite thing about journaling?

I can’t choose just one! If I have to pick, I would say that it’s having access to ten years of my thoughts and feelings and daily life just at the click of a button! Sometimes I like to pick a date and then just go back, starting in 2003, and see what I was up to on this day in 2003, 2004, 2005, and so on up to the present. (Although sometimes that’s cringeworthy!) I had no idea people would burn their journals before I started reading your column! If I kept paper diaries, I would be firmly in the “do not burn ever” camp.

How is a diary like a time machine? (Via National Geographic)

I do morning pages in addition to keeping my LiveJournal. I started it the first time I attempted The Artist’s Way (which I still haven’t finished) and I really liked it. I write those (in OmmWriter on my laptop) while I eat breakfast, about 750ish words every morning. It’s totally private, unlike my LiveJournal, which is friends locked but other people can read it, so it is sort of for an audience.

Ah, yes! That makes perfect sense. Can you describe what makes the practice of morning pages special to you? I know it is often supposed to be more of an associative, stream-of-consciousness kind of writing—do you find that is the case?

It depends on the day. I don’t do mine as soon as I get up; I shower and cook breakfast and write while I eat. This morning it was mentally working out everything I had to get done by the end of the day, but sometimes it’s story ideas or dreams, that sort of thing. I also do a one card tarot reading as part of my morning pages, inspired by Autostraddle’s own Tarot School!

This paper tarot journal doesn’t belong to Frances, but it does look pretty. (Via Seventh Element)

Cool! That sounds like a great routine. Do you really and truly do it every day? (If so, I am super impressed!)

Yes! I don’t update my LiveJournal every day, because sometimes I’m too tired when I get home from a long day, but I do my morning pages without fail. I think I’ve missed them once since I started, and I was sick and never actually got out of bed that day.

AWESOME. I am amazed. How long have you been doing them?

I think I started in summer of 2013.

Do you think your journaling intersects in any ways with your queerness?

You know, I don’t think so? They’re both very normal parts of my life. I never had a major moment of realization like “ohmygod, I’m queer!” and my family is really chill and accepting, so I didn’t have a lot of “but what if I like girls?!” feelings.

I guess I did hear about asexuality because of LiveJournal? Does that count?

LiveJournal: Bringer of Wisdom and Truth

That totally counts! Do you have any other journaling thoughts/stories/feelings etc. that you want to share?

Only that journaling has kept me sane.

If that is not a recommendation for journaling, folks, I don’t know what is! Share your own thoughts on the relationship between journaling and sanity in the comments.

Dear Queer Diary is a column about the joys (and occasionally, the pains) of journaling. We crack open our tiny notebooks and break out the rainbow-colored pens on the regular, so get ready to limber up your writing hands and document all your beautiful feelings!

Header by Rory Midhani

Dear Queer Diary: It’s Carolyne!

Excuse me, waiter? There’s a Straddler in my journal!

And with that unprecedentedly bad non-joke, we are off on another virtual odyssey through the mind of one of Autostraddle’s own journaling geniuses! However, before I introduce you to this week’s notebook-toting maiden, allow me to issue a brief reminder: brunch is coming!

Now, I know that some of you dear queer diarists may be introverted types, who prefer to write down your deepest feelings rather than converse with strangers over omelets. However, the glory of Autostraddle brunch is that it’s all about you doing you, which means that if you want to go eat French toast bake, talk quietly to one or two people, and then go home to write quietly in your journal, I personally would 100% support your doing that!

In fact, if you live within an hour of Boston, I would be entirely scandalized if you did not come to my brunch in order to eat French toast bake and write about it in your journal. The many other Autostraddle brunch hosts around with world and I would love to meet you and hear about your favorite pens and/or pencils. Now, on to the main event!

Carolyne

Carolyne is originally from Iowa, but she just moved herself and her journals to the great state of Kentucky in the pursuit of a new job and new adventures. Carolyne has been working in opera since she was nineteen: she went to school for voice and now works behind the scenes to make arrangements for artists’ contracts, housing, and transportation. In her free time, Carolyne attempts to keep her plants alive and bakes delicious cookies — she tells me her specialties are oatmeal chocolate chip and chocolate gingersnap!

The journaler of the hour!

First question: do you tend to call it your diary or your journal?

I call it my journal. I think I made a conscious decision back in my early journaling days to not call it a diary. “Diary” sounds kind of like something girls use to write about who they have their latest crush on, which is actually what I did in my journal — but I still didn’t want to call it a diary.

I’m with you. I just sometimes have to call it a diary because I can only say “journal” so many times in one paragraph. What does your current journal look like?

I have two journals at the moment. I have this big one that a friend gave me for Christmas when I was in college. On the cover, it has Olivia the pig, and she is singing “40 Very Loud Songs.” That’s the one I’ve been writing in for about five years. And then I have a 3 x 5 one that I keep with me at all times in case I have some feelings that I want to write about on a bus or something like that.

Cool. So you have your two journals going on—and do you always use the same writing utensil?

Yes. Right now, I’m using the Pilot Razorpoint, which actually another Straddler suggested because it does not bleed through paper. Before, I was using Le Pen, and I have also used the Sharpie pen marker. I just really like fine-tip marker pens!

Don’t you wish everyone made their pen-purchasing decisions based on recommendations from the Autostraddle comments section? I know I do! (Via Paper Pastries)

How frequently do you journal?

It depends. I haven’t journaled in [flips back in journal] maybe a little under two weeks because I’ve been moving and I just didn’t want to have to deal with the feelings that went with that and leaving this family that I had created. But I probably journal at least once a month on average. It really comes and goes.

For a long time, I tried to journal every night and set some time aside, because journaling is very important to me and I’ve been doing it forever, but it’s not something that I’ve found that I can force myself to do. I’m not as happy with the product, I guess.

That being said, what is your favorite thing about journaling?

It allows me to be very thoughtful. Because you’re putting pen to paper and you’re committing it into a more permanent form, it really makes me think about what I’m writing. So if my brain is going a million miles an hour, I’m forcing myself to slow it down and write something out that halfway makes sense. I can be really upset and think that I’m going to end up writing a dozen pages, and by the time I’ve written five minutes and only covered a page and a half, all of a sudden I feel a ton better about the situation or I’ve come up with a new thought about it.

Have you journaled about your queerness? Or do you think there are some connections between your sexuality and your journal?

You know, I think that there are. Because when I was in the process of coming out, I was living in the middle of nowhere with not very many friends and no one I really felt comfortable talking to about it, so I turned to my journal to sort of work out what was happening and why I might feel this way. Looking back, how I wrote about certain situations, about crushes that I thought I might have or about how I was angry with my best friend for something so silly really sort of shed some light onto the whole gay thing.

Carolyne’s journals: a spinal view.

It’s great that you have that to look back on. Here’s a potentially controversial question: would you ever burn your journals?

No. I mean, I think they are very important artifacts of my former selves. I actually did destroy my journals from high school, and while I think in the grand scheme of things, it’s fine, I am a little disappointed and a little sad that I can’t go back and read what I was going through from a ten-years-later perspective.

I was in high school when online journaling really became a thing, so I had three online journals, and I deleted all of them. You know, there probably would have been some really telling things that would have helped me come out a lot sooner or come to terms with it. From an anthropological stance, I’m disappointed that they’re not there. I think from a face-saving stance, I would never want anyone to have to read them again, and I feel okay that they’re not around.

Was that your motivation for deleting them at the time?

No. I was because of the still relatively newness of the internet in the mid-2000s—the mid-aughts, if you will — and everybody being like, “Oh, your future employers are going to find this, and you’ll never get a job if you have things online.” I deleted because I didn’t want future employers to see it, and I didn’t have the wherewithal to download it onto a thumbdrive and keep it forever. I was just like, “Oh God, I want to be employed, I have to get rid of this!”

Ah, yes — I can understand that panic. I definitely would not want my future employers to read my high school journals. Do you ever include pictures or anything besides words in your journal?

Not really. It’s mostly a word thing. I do have—I wouldn’t call it a journal — it’s what my mom calls an idea book. (She’s a visual artist.) It’s sort of like a sketchbook meets a scrapbook meets an ooh-I-liked-this-dress-in-Marie-Claire-so-I’m-going-to-cut-it-out-and-eventually-purchase-it.

Please note how Carolyne’s plant (right) is still alive.

Wow! So you actually have three journals, if we interpret journal as a broad category.

Yes, I guess so. I may have a journaling problem.

I don’t think it’s possible to have a journaling problem. Unless it’s not having enough journals.

That is a big problem. But I have more than enough journals. I have like eight spares. It’s a little ridiculous.

Or not!

I think we can all agree that Carolyne’s problem is a good problem to have, my dearest, queerest diarists. Tell us how many journals you have in the comments, share your opinion on the “journal” vs. “diary” distinction, and don’t forget to come to brunch this weekend!

Dear Queer Diary is a column about the joys (and occasionally, the pains) of journaling. We crack open our tiny notebooks and break out the rainbow-colored pens on the regular, so get ready to limber up your writing hands and document all your beautiful feelings!

Header by Rory Midhani

Dear Queer Diary: Meet Abbie

My dear queer diarists, this week it is my pleasure to introduce you to another notebook-toting celebrity with a pen in her hand and brilliance in her brain. Prepare yourselves.

Abbie

This week’s journaling genius is none other than Abbie, an outrageously lovely person from the city of Nashville, Tennessee. When Abbie is not journaling, she does communications and administrative work at a non-profit counseling agency, dabbles in graphic design, and hangs out with her cat Indigo. She claims that she’s not very good at talking about herself, but I think we will all be able to agree that she is pretty darn fantastic at talking about the fine art of writing in one’s diary. We discussed coming out to one’s diary, kicking the bucket, and the therapeutic properties of writing things down.

Abbie’s bangs are my new obsession.

When did you start journaling?

I started in fifth or sixth grade… for about a year. Then I started again my sophomore year of high school, and I’ve been journaling ever since. It takes me about two years, generally, to fill up a journal.

The content [from older journals], of course, is very different from what it is now — what boys I was trying to have a crush on, and great self-righteous moral judgments against my friends who weren’t Christian enough at the time. When I started back, I got that first journal after my sophomore year of high school at a youth camp. I think the worship minister was selling it; his daughter had made it. It was actually pretty cool — she did all this artwork and they printed it, and each page is really colorful. I started and then I realized how therapeutic it really is.

That actually segues nicely into my next question, which is: what is your favorite thing about journaling? 

If I don’t write, I don’t know what’s in my head. It really helps me figure out what I’m thinking and feeling.

Abbie’s current journal and preferred journaling pen.

 Great! Here is a series of questions for you — statements based on things that have come up in previous columns that people seem to have strong opinions. You tell me if you agree/disagree/neutral—whatever. The first one is, “I would consider burning my journal.”

No.

Why not?

I like the history of where I’ve been. It’s part of me.

Yes! I completely agree. Next statement: “I would let somebody else read my journal.”

Yes, but probably after I’m dead. I actually have a second journal, which is kind of like, in case of my death, read this. It has the important information in it, and I’ve catalogued all the journals I still have. It has a description of what it looks like and then the years, even though I write the date on every entry. I don’t know. I guess that’s one thing I’m proud to leave behind and people who may know me will get to know me ten thousand times better if they read it.

I bought that journal a long time — well, a few years ago — and it sat empty for a good long while because I didn’t know what to put into it. It obviously doesn’t take the place of a will. I keep my internet passwords in it — not written in it, but just a sheet of paper stuck in there, because that will be helpful if I kick the bucket. I’m kind of stuck on what else to put in it.

Abbie’s next journal is emblazoned with a sloth. (Via inblue)

Well, hopefully you don’t need it soon! Here’s another question — have you ever written in code in your journal?

If you count the years before I came out and was super super Christian still — it’s not a purposeful code, but I was couching all of my feelings in Christian language and terms, never quite saying I was experiencing desire for the same sex. It’s there — it’s just not overtly stated.

That actually intersects with another question I was going to ask, which is how your journal intersects with your queerness — obviously, they’re not totally separate. What’s the relationship between your journaling and your coming out?

I really liked the coming out post. I think journaling was very integral in the process, because, like I said, I don’t really get what I’m thinking and feeling unless I’ve written it out. Then it’s much clearer, so journaling was helpful in trying to piece it all together.

Is there a moment where you sort of turned the page in your journal and were like, okay, now we’re going to talk about it explicitly?

Yes. And actually, it was after a conversation I had with my mother, and at the time, I was kind of piecing it together but was not at all ready to really talk about it with anyone. She was talking to me about my oldest brother and told me that he told her one time that he was experiencing same-sex attraction. I had the biggest freak-out moment and I immediately went to my journal because it was the only person I could talk to — even though it’s not a person. And I was just like, well, it’s great that he was able to say that to her all those years ago, but I’m not ready. But I have the same secret, essentially. And so that was the first time I said it. I came out to my journal before I came out to anyone.

This is not Abbie’s childhood journal, for obvious reasons. (Via SusanGreenBooks)

If you were giving advice to a journaling newbie, what is your piece of advice you would share with someone?

Hmmm. It’s hard for me to imagine trying to get into journaling because I’m so into it already. Maybe, if you’re trying to write about something and you’re not having much luck, try to write about something else — just whatever comes naturally to you. It doesn’t have to be perfect.

Word. Intergalactic Journaling Awareness Month isn’t over yet, my diary-writing friends! As you eagerly await your opportunity to meet another Straddler-Journaler, feel free to keep the conversation flowing in the comments—and find other bizarre holidays to celebrate during the month of August.

Dear Queer Diary is a column about the joys (and occasionally, the pains) of journaling. We crack open our tiny notebooks and break out the rainbow-colored pens on the regular, so get ready to limber up your writing hands and document all your beautiful feelings!

Header by Rory Midhani

Dear Queer Diary: A Friend of Journaling Is A Friend of Mine

As much as I love talking about myself, there comes a time in the course of lesbian events when it is necessary to let some of our other dear queer diarists speak, and that time, my beloved readers, is right now.

I hereby declare this August to be the first Intergalactic Journaling Awareness Month, a joyous occasion that we here at the Milky Way Outpost of Diary-Writing will be commemorating with a very special series of interviews with some of the latest and greatest Straddler-Journalers on the planet. It’s going to be a little like Straddler on the Street, except with more pens, more notebooks, and just as many feelings. Straddler in the Journal, we might say?

One of the Straddlers in question, with her journal.

Today, it is my pleasure to introduce you to an amazing lady who has been journaling since she could hold a pencil. Even over Skype, it was obvious that she has a wise mind, awesome hair, and a beautiful soul, so please — sit back, relax, and enjoy her journaling genius.

Tango

Tango is a self-described word person — she says she’s “obsessed with language, rhetoric, and discourse,” or, to put it more simply, “I like talking about talking.” She’s an American army brat who’s “not really from anywhere,” but I happen to know she feels quite at home in the comments section of this fair website! She has two cats, Jasper and Molly, who apparently like to lie on bookcases in order to absorb the wisdom therein.

As described.

So, tell me about your current journal.

My current journal was a gift from my partner’s grandmother — it had a dorky little Walt Disney quote on the front about following your dreams or something, but I actually completely covered it in eyeball stickers from our Halloween event at the retail shop I was working at. So, I have a little four-by-five notebook that’s covered in eyeballs.

That’s awesome. Do you think that’s metaphorical — it’s watching you or something?

Haha. Right? I don’t know…

Tango’s journal, before and after.

Have you always been a journaler, since the time you were little? Can you remember first journaling?

Oh yeah. I’m an only child, so I started journaling when I started writing. I’m an over-introspective kind of type. I go back and read my journals a lot too, and then I write about what I reread, and it gets meta. I don’t have a lot of them, is the sad part, but I can picture some. I know that my mom got me one of those Girl Tech password-protected journal-things when I was, like, 10. I remember I wrote in that all the time, except I could never get my password to work, and I always had to break into it.

Was it electronic? Like you had to enter a code or something?

It was voice-activated! But I guess it captured the inflection of your voice, and I never said the password the same way. I don’t know! It was purple, and it was obviously plastic—the whole outer case was like a hard shell so that it could electronically open and close the lock.

Do you remember what the password was?

I don’t, but I would always have my password in a British accent because I felt like nobody would think to do that.

Someone buy this immediately. (Via eBay)

Nice! That’s very clever! What is your favorite thing about journaling now — what drives you to go and journal when other people are doing other things?

Hmm. The best way I can explain this is with astrology. It’s that in Mercury, I’m a Taurus, so I’m very slow and plodding about my ideas, and that can actually be frustrating for me sometimes. So journaling is a great way to just vom all my ideas out in one, and then I can go back and restructure them and understand myself. But journaling is that free, empty, no edit, no judgment space. Does that make sense?

That totally makes sense. I really like the free, empty, no judgement kind of thing because I definitely try and use it for that — and I have since I was in high school. Because I was a total perfectionist, so was constantly judging myself on everything.

I think I actually became a better journaler after I took playwriting courses in college. A lot of those courses were about postponing your inner editor — it was just about writing for the moment. We had lots of in-class, “you’ve got two minutes, write out a monologue,” whatever, and [my professor] was really great. He was almost like a boot-camp instructor for your inner editor and muse. So, after that, I was able to journal without pre-judging my ideas.

Yes. Totally. Okay, this is kind of a strangely specific question, and feel free to say this has no relevance to your journaling, but given this is Autostraddle, I am wondering if you have any sort of feelings about how your journal interacts with your sexuality or your queerness or however you identify that.

So I’m sure you know what LiveJournal is — do you know what DeadJournal is?

No!

It was kind of a branch website — it had to have spawned from LiveJournal because it was basically like the opposite. Everything was very dark, the whole aesthetic of the website. Your journal was called your grave and your side-panel options were like “go to the mortuary.” Really goofy like that.

Check out that dark and gloomy aesthetic. (Via DeadJournal)

But similar to LiveJournal, you could add friends and people could read. I had a DeadJournal in late elementary through early middle school, and I had two other friends, and the three of us wrote on there. And we really — it’s really great because I can still go back and look at it — and we really fleshed out our sexualities on DeadJournal together, but not together. Because we could write about our feelings about people and if we thought it was weird or if we thought it was natural. We never really explicitly talked to each other about it, but it was a great place to just express that—and know that someone’s there and that they’re not judging you for it. So it was kind of private-without-being-private because it was just my two friends.

And then, kind of along those same lines, but more recently, in the last year and half, I’ve realized that not only am I queer, but I’m also what would be like, gray-ace demisexual, and I came to that through journaling because I denied it a lot…

I give this page the award for Best Performance By A Crayon in a Grown-Up Journal.

Do you have any other journaling tidbits, pieces of advice you would share? Hilarious journaling stories? Tragic journaling stories?

I just try to keep my journal on me at all times. Someone once asked me, Is that so no one ever reads it? But it’s mostly because I’m really bad at keeping a journaling schedule, so I’ve found that if I just have it on me whenever there are those moments—like if I am going to pick someone up, I am generally early to everything, so I’m going to be in my car for ten, fifteen minutes and that’s a great opportunity to write down what I’ve been thinking about during the day. My journal is always in my backpack or my purse. Always.

And your journaling wisdom shall always be in our hearts, Tango! Isn’t she so great? Next week, watch this space for more journaling greatness. A gloriously Alternative Lifestyle Haircut-ed lady from Tennessee is right around the metaphorical corner!

Dear Queer Diary is a column about the joys (and occasionally, the pains) of journaling. We crack open our tiny notebooks and break out the rainbow-colored pens on the regular, so get ready to limber up your writing hands and document all your beautiful feelings!

Header by Rory Midhani

Dear Queer Diary: Food Journaling, Glorious Food Journaling

Food is very important to me — and I mean that in more than the usual food/water/shelter sense. In the past week alone, I have made pita bread from scratch, visited a new restaurant after perusing about a million Yelp reviews, and convinced my girlfriend that we needed to have ice cream on both Friday evening and Saturday afternoon (frankly, she didn’t need much convincing, which is one of the many reasons I find her so delightful).

It seems strange then, that I don’t spend all that much time journaling about food, which usually takes the form of words only for the sake of grocery lists and notes on the recipes I have tried. In truth, one of the things that I love about food and cooking is the way it takes me away from sentences — whether that is the email I am supposed to be composing or the papers I am supposed to be grading. As someone who spends a great deal of time immersed in words, there is a certain tactile appeal to measuring and sautéing and even washing dishes.

This awesome zine contains five months of the author’s meals—illustrated! (Via dethpsun)

Still, I frequently record my cooking projects in some way or another, texting my mother to brag about another successful meal I made all by myself (the novelty still hasn’t worn off), sending a recipe to a friend, or even (embarrassingly?) tweeting about my culinary triumphs. With all this in mind, the other day, I decided to Google “food journal” in hopes of finding the inspiration to unite my love of all things tasty and flavorful with my dear queer diary.

As is the case with many Google searches, the results were not what I was expecting. Retrospectively, I suppose I should have anticipated that the majority of the pages to pop up would be about weight loss. But as much as I respect anyone who has the patience to carefully monitor their food intake for the sake of nutrition, it seems crazy (at least to me!) to keep a food journal that has more to do with not eating than enjoying the many culinary delights of the wide world.

These sweet potato chips look delicious, am I right? (Via Nancy Standlee)

The type of food journal I want to keep is far more likely to be about two days of ice cream in a row than an abstemious snack of celery sticks. According to such-and-such a study, the traditional women’s magazine kind of food journaling increases weight loss by something-something percent, but my kind of food journaling does a 73% better job of fighting the patriarchy. Isn’t it the prerogative of a food-loving lady to glory in the delicious food she eats, even/especially if it makes her a little — or a lot — less of a delicate, male-dependent blossom?

Ice cream tastes amazing and gives me the strength to take down sexism when I encounter it.

This, my dear queer diarists, would be the philosophy of my (at this point still mostly hypothetical) food journal. The good news is that, after a little more searching, I found that there are plenty of food journalers who are of my frame of mind. In fact, our ever-controversial friend Moleskine even sells journals targeted at various food connoisseurs — they have volumes dedicated to recipes, restaurants, dessert, and even chocolate.

You might keep a food journal specific to traveling in order to document the foreign delights you encounter in whatever places your hiking boots take you — or you might get artistic in order to depict your latest culinary conquests in pen, pencil, or watercolor. And then there is the amazing exhaustiveness of simply documenting every single piece of food that goes into your mouth — whether you choose to do so via words or pictures.

Or perhaps via words and pictures! (Via Sketchbookbuttons)

Actually, in spite of my past inexperience in the world of food-related journaling, food-related pictures are something with which I have a great deal of experience. I often find myself actively curating my Instagram uploads in order to avoid letting food take over my profile (although really, what would be so wrong with that?). In my youth, I remember making an illustrated menu for my family’s Thanksgiving dinner, and one of my favorite middle school doodling strategies was to draw that day’s cafeteria lunch in my planner. And then there is the fact that recently, I found myself reminiscing about one of my favorite pairs of underwear from my childhood, which I recalled being decorated with carrots, peas, and other vegetables. I am going to take this as a sign that I have the fundamentals of a food-journaler imbedded deep in my psyche.

Food Photos I Have Taken: Exhibit A.

Now, my dear queer diarists, I must go make pizza with my girlfriend. I’ll leave it to you to tell me whether you are current or aspiring food journalers — or just food-eaters with a healthy dose of appreciation for going out for ice cream on two consecutive days.

Dear Queer Diary is a column about the joys (and occasionally, the pains) of journaling. We crack open our tiny notebooks and break out the rainbow-colored pens on the regular, so get ready to limber up your writing hands and document all your beautiful feelings!

Header by Rory Midhani

Dear Queer Diary: Notes From An Inveterate People-Watcher

My grandfather is an avid birdwatcher, and when I was yet a wee thing, a typical afternoon with Papa Dave consisted of a walk through the forest/fields/swamps toting my special child-sized binoculars in search of avian life. This was one of those grandparental bonding activities that I eventually grew out of—by the time I hit thirteen or fourteen, the sight of a nesting grouse no longer provided sufficient compensation for the discomforts of wading through itchy grass under the hot sun. But while I left the black-billed magpies and sagebrush sparrows in my past, those early ornithological sessions engendered in me an aptitude for observation that I have been able to adapt to certain other (air-conditioned) environments.

No, this is not a column about birding journals. (Via Bird Watcher’s Digest)

I consider myself to be a star people-watcher — I’ve only just stopped short of preparing my acceptance speech for the award for Best People-Watcher in a Mid-Sized New England Coffee Shop, a distinction that recognizes excellence in observation, eavesdropping, and a deep and abiding fascination with utter strangers. Some of my favorite places to people watch include the grocery store, where I am fascinated by the contents of people’s carts, and the airport, where I have been known to spend layovers wondering where that man in the three-piece suit is going and what possessed him to wear a vest in the middle of July.

Last week, I visited one of my favorite bakeries on planet earth, an establishment whose lack of WiFi only enhances my ability to devote my full attention to the people sitting at the tables around me. While in residence, I spent a good hour and half creeping on the generally adorable people eating cakes and sipping artistically prepared lattes around me. There was the older man with the cup of black coffee, the twenty-something reading some very large textbooks, and the beautifully queer-looking ladies (in hiking boots) rehashing some serious workplace drama (there were tears right there in the bakery!).

Although I didn’t take this picture, I have definitely eaten this cake. (Via The V Life)

The tables were arranged in such a way that I couldn’t help but overhear their conversations, and it seemed only natural to glance up in between nibbles of lemon currant scone to observe certain details. Before I knew it, I was describing the people around me in the middle of the journal entry I had started when I sat down. Once I started listening, I was hooked—trying to figure out exactly what the relationship was between the two women to my left and why the girl in front of me looked so excited.

Although I’m aware that this isn’t necessarily a hobby of which my elementary school teacher would have approved, I’m more than happy to defend it. Yes, I have always had trouble minding my own beeswax; however, I’m of the belief that this is a sign of my natural curiosity and appreciation for the individual qualities of the people around me rather than any kind of immoral tendencies. And though it is entirely true that writing in one’s journal is a great cover for seriously stealthy people-watching, I think the connection between people watching and my dear queer diary actually goes beyond that.

Journaling is an activity that requires us to think, at least subconsciously, about what it means to be a person. In the pages of my diary, I hash out my priorities, contemplate what it meant when so-and-so said such-and-such, and try to understand where I have come from, where I am going. Some of these same questions are naturally raised in the process of observing people being people, whether it is in a coffee shop, on a park bench, or at the library. Why did she use that tone? What was he hoping to achieve by carrying that particular briefcase?

This is an amazing example of the intersection of people and journals. (Via Sketchbuch)

Arguably, the relationship between the people-watcher and her people-watch-ee is analogous to the relationship we have with ourselves while we are journaling—we take a step back from doing what we are doing in order to observe ourselves, to notice (and write about) our actions and our moods. In my mid-size New England coffee shops, I am a reporter on the human condition, a detective of caffeine-ingesting individuals; in my journal, I am a reporter on and a detective of me, myself, and I.

In fact, eavesdropping is a common assignment for actors and fiction writers — I have taken classes in which I’ve been instructed to go and find a conversation to “overhear” in the hopes that this will allow us to create truer characters or more authentic dialogue. If people-watching helps an actor understand a character for the stage, why wouldn’t it help a person understand herself in the pages of her journal?

What are your favorite people-watching locales? Have you ever found yourself writing in your journal about the conversation of the people next to you? Are you disturbed by my utter lack of regard for the privacy of the people around me? What say you journaling geniuses?

Dear Queer Diary is a column about the joys (and occasionally, the pains) of journaling. We crack open our tiny notebooks and break out the rainbow-colored pens on the regular, so get ready to limber up your writing hands and document all your beautiful feelings!

Header by Rory Midhani

Dear Queer Diary: Picture This

My stuffed rabbit has no fingers, which makes it nearly impossible for her to keep a conventional journal. However, on certain occasions in both her young life and mine, she has had great success with photo diaries, asking her human friends to snap photos of her as she engages in exciting activities such as eating carrots and taking a hop around the neighborhood.

Although no photos from the original diary survive on my present computer, I can offer you this fantastic shot of Bunby on the open road.

Of course, the photo diary is equally loved by creatures with fingers — it’s often used by journalists, such as in this depiction of Ramadan currently running in the national paper of the United Arab Emirates, and it was, obviously, a favorite of high school girls everywhere back in the golden days of the middle 2000s.

Although I have never kept a complete photo diary myself, I am keen to start one, especially in this age of constantly accessible cell phone cameras. I have a secret love of scrolling back through my Instagram feed, and the idea of a photo journal seems like it would be even better — a truer reflection of each day, unfiltered by LoFi or my desire to look cool to my seven or eight followers.

This photo journal looks cool without even trying. (Via m. napper)

What does one document in such a journal? A wee bit of research has taught me that things that are growing and changing rapidly make for particularly enthralling photo journals—newborns/puppies/kittens are classics, but I can imagine a beautiful little photo diary of your succulent garden too! On an even more awesomely queer note, Against Me! frontwoman, Trans 100 member, and future online reality show star Laura Jane Grace kept a photo diary of her transition.

(Via Cosmo)

As in all things journaling, with the photo diary, there’s the age-old question of analog versus digital. Personally, I’m torn. While I truly appreciate the tactile pleasures of paging through each day of a photo diary, at the same time, I like the idea of my carefully assembled images staying safe in the unlikely event that I set the apartment on fire trying to make quesadillas.

If you have the time/energy/cash moola to print your photos out and craft them into beautiful books, there are a million and five beautiful ways you might arrange them — scotch taping them into your word-filled journal in a thoroughly old-school manner or creating nicely captioned photo albums to show off to anyone and everyone who sets foot in your living room.

This photo is making me want to wear nail polish for the first time since 2011. (Via Making Nice in the Midwest)

Conversely, if you phone is of the too-smart-for-its-own-good variety, you might be inclined to take a gander at some photo diary apps that will help you compile your images. Collect, which is free for iPhone, encourages you to caption photos and arranges them in an aesthetically pleasing calendar format. From there, you can view and/or export them, and ultimately print them if you are so inclined. I am particularly intrigued by the possibility of creating multiple diaries focused on different subjects—imagine one devoted to your breakfasts! The tree outside your front door! Your beautiful face! Your girlfriend’s beautiful face!

Check out that attractive font. (Via Collect)

You may have already read about the TED talk smartypants who decided to document his life by taking one second of video every day and editing it all together into one crazy video—now, he’s got an app, so you can do it too.

Gimicky as all this may seem, the photo (or video) diary operates on the same principle at the good ol’ pen and paper diary—remember, the word comes from the Latin root for “day.” Whether I choose to document my day in words or images, I believe that the act of documenting allows me notice things I wouldn’t otherwise notice, appreciate things I might otherwise take for granted, and remember things I might otherwise forget. Cheesy, yes. But I love cheese.

Case in point: a recent cheese plate chez moi.

Have you ever kept a photo journal? If you had to pick an image to sum up your day, what would it be of? Or are you too busy snapping photos to leave a comment?

Dear Queer Diary is a column about the joys (and occasionally, the pains) of journaling. We crack open our tiny notebooks and break out the rainbow-colored pens on the regular, so get ready to limber up your writing hands and document all your beautiful feelings!

Header by Rory Midhani

Dear Queer Diary: Summer Re-Reading

Ever since the days of my public library’s summer reading program, in which you could win fabulous prizes such as free books and king-sized candy bars by filling out a weekly reading log, summer time has always been one of my favorite times for reading. While I love the idea of curling up under a blanket with a good book, there is something equally seductive about a long summer evening spent turning pages while sitting on a porch swing next to one’s lady love, perhaps pausing for a Klondike bar between chapters.

I presently have no porch swing, but boxes of Klondike bars were two for five dollars at the grocery store today, meaning that this utopian vision of summer reading is not too far from my reality.

Still life with Klondike bars, banana, and frozen vegetables.

However, my dear queer diarists, I am getting off track. My intention here was not to talk about reading in general (although it should go without saying that this is an amazing, wonderful, magnificent, splendiferous activity), but to talk about a very specific kind of reading: namely, the reading of diaries.

A long long time ago in a galaxy far far away, we talked about reading other people’s diaries, both fictional and non-fictional. More recently, we discussed the possibility of others reading your top secret musings– with and without permission. However, my favorite diary-reading scenario has always been and shall always be a solo affair. I love reading my own diary.

I especially love the parts written in outrageously small handwriting in which I obsess about my inability to speak in front of my teacher crush.

I will be the first to admit that this is probably a reflection upon my extreme narcissism (I was once cast as Narcissus in a Greek-mythology-themed play, in what I have always been convinced was a not-so-subtle hint from my high school drama teacher). Who would want to sit around reading about themselves when, as every good Sharon Creech fan knows, reading is an opportunity to walk two moons in someone else’s moccasins?

In my defense, my diary re-reading habit is not exactly detracting from my ability to engage with other reading material — I’m not talking about my sitting down and reading my middle school journal from cover to cover on a nightly basis. My preferred re-reading technique tends more towards the style of the honeybee, buzzing through a few pages and then flying away for weeks, months, or years, leaving myself plenty of time to contemplate the hilarity, cringe-worthiness, and occasional self-knowledge gained from my re-reading of those entries. In light of this, I would argue that my diary re-reading is actually a good habit—revisiting a record of the thoughts, happinesses, and anxieties of past Maggie helps me understand current Maggie a little bit better.

This page records the shining day my best friend and I purchased the final Harry Potter book in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

This may not be the case for everyone, of course. Some disagree vociferously with the notion that re-reading one’s diary can be a good thing (and some are tragically down on the idea of diarizing in the first place for similar reasons). I can understand that re-examining that entry on a painful break-up too soon after the fact might just be a method of prolonging the agony. And I can see how noticing the same pattern repeated time and again might feed depression rather than helping to mitigate it.

But I hope that most of you dear queer diarists see happier things in the pages of your journals: whether those are good memories of that one time you asked the girl at the bakery for her phone number or not-so-good memories that you can be happy to have behind you. My life has been relatively un-traumatic — but nine times out of ten, rereading my diary fills me with gratitude as to how much has changed since the year 2009, when I was still dating (ridiculous!) boys and doing far too much homework.

If Oscar Wilde quotations are enough to sway you, allow me to note that Gwendolyn Fairfax of The Importance of Being Ernest is wholly in favor of diary-rereading. She announces at one point in the play that, “I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”

This has to be one of my all-time favorite movies. (Via Elegance of Fashion)

In the words of my younger brother, who was interviewed for this column via text message, “If it was worth writing, it is probably worth reading. And if it isn’t worth reading now, the fact that you once thought it was worth writing offers insight of its own.” How’s that for a pearl of wisdom from a boy who spends the vast majority of his time writing computer code?

Do you re-read your journals, my dear queer diarists? Or do you lock them away in the hopes of forgetting that embarrassing episode with the cheetah-print underwear and the angel food cake? Tell me your tales!

Dear Queer Diary is a column about the joys (and occasionally, the pains) of journaling. We crack open our tiny notebooks and break out the rainbow-colored pens on the regular, so get ready to limber up your writing hands and document all your beautiful feelings!

Header by Rory Midhani

Dear Queer Diary: The Place Where You Journal

When I tell people that I write a (nearly) weekly column about journaling, I often get skeptical looks. How could someone possibly come up with something new to say about writing in a journal every seven days? I will admit that it does sometime seem a tiny bit ridiculous.

And yet you, my dearest queerest diarists, have borne testament to the fact that my quest is not, in fact, an impossible one. Although I will be the first to admit that occasionally I work in a topic that is a bit of stretch (see: 4 Things Your Journal Has In Common with Orange Is the New Black), I find that almost as frequently, the opposite is true: an idea pops into my head that seems so important — so integral to the spirit of journaling — that it suddenly seems ludicrous that I have failed to address it thus far.

This is one of those topics. We have discussed why we journal and what we journal and how we journal and who we allow to read our journals. How, how, how (how?) is it possible that we have not yet discussed the deeply important subject of where we journal? The time is now!

Is it just me or does this desk look unrealistically clean and well decorated? (Via The Desk Set)

Of course, the beauty of journaling for many of us may be in its adaptability to a variety of places. On my recent travels, I was overjoyed to see several lovely ladies journaling on park benches (one clad in a particularly stylish maroon felt hat), and I myself took out my journal to dash off a few words at cafés and on trains. Over my years as a queer diarist, I have journaled in bed, on park benches, in dorm rooms, at library tables, and in coffee shops ranging from the deeply hip to the entirely suburban.

However, the geographic flexibility associated with the journal does not mean that we can’t have our favorite places to journal — the big armchair that makes your pen pick up its pace or the corner table in the coffee shop that you wait patiently for the annoying boy with the laptop to vacate. As always, WikiHow has some brilliant suggestions on “Find[ing] a Good Place to Write,” for those who are curious.

This looks like a good place to write to me! (Via Workspaces)

Anyone who has spent any significant period of time engrossed in the literary internet will no doubt already be aware that the subject of where writers write is one that comes up with some frequency. A few years ago, The Guardian ran a series on Writers’ Rooms that includes some great photos with accompanying blurbs — and if you want more photos and fewer words, then of course there is a whole Tumblrverse full of pictures to inspire and entertain you.

For Virginia Woolf, my favorite journaling foremother, place was certainly important in the writing process — in her diaries, she occasionally comments on where she is sitting and more famously, she declared that a woman needed a room of her own in order to write (fiction, in particular). While the famous room was mostly a way of underlining the female writer’s need for freedom from the narrow prescriptions of early 20th century femininity, there is something seductive about the physicality of the room itself. Woolf, of course, had one — at Monk’s House, her country home, it was actually in its own separate building.

One of my chief regrets from my recent trip to the U.K. is that I didn’t visit Virginia Woolf’s writing studio. (Photo by Eamonn McCabe via The Guardian)

Of course, one might reasonably raise the question of whether you would even want the literal room of one’s own — since I also know many a writer who prefers to write in a room with other people, where that means J.K. Rowling’s famous Elephant House in Edinburgh; the reading room of the British Museum, where Woolf also worked; or the café five minutes from your apartment.

These illustrations from a Spanish-language version of A Room of One’s Own totally rock my socks off. (Via Becca Stadtlander)

As much as I have been known to benefit from the experience of journaling in bed or at the kitchen table, I think that I may actually prefer journaling away from home, where I am less likely to be distracted by making myself a sandwich or taking out my outrageously stinky trash (a result of cooking with too much garlic). For me, being away from those things that ground me too fully in my everyday life makes it easier to find my way to that magical liminal state between the physical world and the world of the mind—the ethereal, unicorn-filled land of my queer diary.

It is for similar reasons, perhaps, that I find that I journal a great deal on various modes of transportation. I wrote epic diary entries recapping the climactic few weeks of each semester of my college career during the cross-country plane trips that took me home from school, and judging from the general hubbub surrounding Amtrak’s now-(in)famous writer’s residency, I am not the only one who enjoys writing whilst in transit.

The person who took this picture must like writing in whilst in transit too! (Via Suite T)

Where do you journal, my dear queer diarists? Do you have any suggestions of other deeply important journal-related topics that this column has thus far failed to address? If you’re feeling extra ambitious, send pictures of your journaling space to maggie[at]autostraddle.com or post them in the comments!

Dear Queer Diary is a column about the joys (and occasionally, the pains) of journaling. We crack open our tiny notebooks and break out the rainbow-colored pens on the regular, so get ready to limber up your writing hands and document all your beautiful feelings!

Header by Rory Midhani

Feature image via Workspaces

Dear Queer Diary: Notes from The Road

Sometimes, my dear queer diarists, you are fortunate enough to go on a vacation. These occasions, I know, are sadly few and far between. Even fewer and far betweener are the occasions on which we are cast adrift without the comforting cocoon of the internet — clutching our journals hopefully and praying that we find our ways without the help of our friend Google maps.

Such have been the last few weeks in Dear Queer Diary-land, my fearless readers — hence the long silence from these parts. I hope that your journals have been filling themselves with brilliant thoughts in the intervening period.

While you have been filling your journals with words, I have been filling myself with scones.

As I suspected as I packed up my Moleskines in preparation for this trip, my own pages have remained fairly empty, but for a few games of tic-tac-toe (my favorite feature of the signature AS notebook) and some smeary recollections penned in my very worst train handwriting — which, I have learned, is only moderately more legible than what I attempt to write with my non-dominant hand.

The only thing worse for my pen(wo)manship than a train is a bus.

Other recent additions to my notebook include the guest list for an apartment-warming party my girlfriend and I planned on one of the aforementioned train rides and an exhaustive chart of who will receive which of the seven million postcards I have not been able to prevent myself from buying.

As it turns out, this is only a fraction of the trip’s gross postcard intake.

In addition to filling the inside of my journal, I have also taken a few choice opportunities to document the outside of it, in the style of the immortal Flat Stanley and his ilk.

Here, my Autostraddle notebook poses seductively with a fruity cider.

I shall no doubt have more to say upon my full return to the World Wide Web, but in the meantime, keep journaling as queerly and dearly as possible. Do you have upcoming summertime adventures you will be able to document?

Dear Queer Diary is a column about the joys (and occasionally, the pains) of journaling. We crack open our tiny notebooks and break out the rainbow-colored pens on the regular, so get ready to limber up your writing hands and document all your beautiful feelings!

Header by Rory Midhani

4 Things Your Journal Has in Common With “Orange is the New Black”

In honor of the much-heralded return of Autostraddle’s favorite television show, allow me to share some ways in which your journal and Orange is the New Black are basically the same thing.

1. They are all the rage on Autostraddle.

I assume you all noticed that there was a time earlier this week when approximately 70% of items on the Autostraddle home page were related in some way, shape, or form to Orange is the New Black. There was the post about the cast on the Red Carpet, a truly genius collection of menu ideas based on the show, and, of course, the deeply impressive ranked list of one hundred orange things.

It’s hard to believe this extremely orange art journal page didn’t make the list! (Via iHanna)

While your own personal journal probably has not reached quite this level of visibility on every queer lady’s favorite website (hint: you are reading it), several of your diaries have, in fact, been featured in this very column. Moreover, it was recently written by none other than AS’s new tarot columnist Beth that, if you “don’t like journals…you’re reading the wrong website.”

Q.E.D., am I right? This is only my first piece of evidence that OITNB = your journal.

2. There are episodes.

You know how every time you write in your diary, there is the same preamble of finding a pen, writing the date, and beginning in the entry with some kind of opener? Television shows are exactly the same way! There’s an intro, a song, and some opening credits, which, in the case of OITNB, feature many extreme close-ups of lips and eyes set to the always-pleasing voice of Regina Spektor.

There’s also the fact that sometimes you wait weeks or even months to write an entry in your journal—and sometimes you have to wait weeks or even months for a new season of your favorite Netflix sensation! The similarities are endless, people.

Hardcore fans will decorate their journal pages with a close-up of their own lips to complete the parallel. (Via Kafka On The Shore)

3. Both involve plenty of lady-loving action.

I don’t want to make too many assumptions, but I think this may be both the most obvious and most important similarity between your dear queer diary and your dearly beloved television show. Whether or not you are a woman who spends a lot of time getting it on with other women in the showers of prisons, if you are reading this website, I think there is a decent chance that your journal contains reference to a sexy female-identified person or two.

4. I haven’t watched/read it.

Go ahead! Decry my madness in the comments! Urge me to log into Netflix immediately! The truth is that I’m a big nerd and I don’t really like watching TV, meaning that I have spent a decent percentage of my life pretending to listen with interest to conversations about characters and plotlines I don’t actually know anything about it. (And, apparently, writing columns based on TV shows I am only vaguely familiar with.)

The alternative, of course, is facing the consternation of my interlocutors when I explain that, no, I have never seen a single episode of Fill-in-the-Blank-Popular-TV-Show-of-the-Moment and no, I was not aware that this was a significant gap in my quest to live a life filled with happiness and meaning. I don’t even own a TV, I often protest, though, in the age of streaming, this excuse no longer means much of anything.

If I owned this sweet orange sofa, I might feel differently about watching television. (Via Zirla)

It’s not that I don’t want to like TV or even that I hate all television programs—it’s just that the majority of the time, there are things I would rather do than spend a multitude of hours on a television show. I have been accused of being an intellectual snob, but I swear to you that it is mostly just a personal preference. I love Regency romance novels (despite the frequent appearances of “throbbing members”), so I can promise you that I am not gazing down at anyone from the throne of high culture.

I feel a tiny bit disloyal even writing this on a website whose very genesis was made possible by television—specifically, The L Word, another show whose pilot I watched before deciding I would rather write in my journal and bake cookies than sit in front of my computer contemplating the crazy alternative lifestyle haircuts of the 1990s. However, in the interest of representing a multiplicity of queer perspectives, I suppose I can whisper my treasonous words into the capacious ears of the internet—while also promising that I will fulfill my duty as a lesbian and Straddler by watching episode two of OITNB sometime in the next few weeks.

This scene appears in the only episode I have heretofore viewed. (Via Autopilot Reviews)

For now, let’s get back to my original premise, shall we?

Orange is the New Black is all the rage, it is divided into seasons/episodes, and it involves ladies getting it in on with other ladies. Your journal is all the rage, it is divided into entries/volumes, and it (probably) involves ladies getting it on with other ladies. My dear queer diarists, we are clearly talking about peas in a pod — birds of a feather — a Tegan and a Sara! Or is your journal the somewhat-identical twin of a different television show entirely?

Dear Queer Diary is a column about the joys (and occasionally, the pains) of journaling. We crack open our tiny notebooks and break out the rainbow-colored pens on the regular, so get ready to limber up your writing hands and document all your beautiful feelings!

Header by Rory Midhani

Dear Queer Diary: I’m Leaving On An Airplane

My grandparents kept track of their travels on an enormous, faded map of the country. It hung on the wall of their living room, where the map stretched from California, just above the lamp, across to Maine, which was positioned over the old brown sofa. My grandfather used red, green, and blue pens to mark the routes they had followed on their many cross-country drives, penning the date of the trip next to each wandering line of highways and scenic routes. For him, this was a kind of travel journal, a way of recording their many car trips as my mother and her siblings grew up, moved away, and started taking trips of their own.

In a just over a week, my girlfriend and I will be hitting the road (or, more accurately, the transatlantic airways) on a trip that wouldn’t fit on my grandfather’s map. Our line stretches all the way to England, where we plan to visit our college roommates, gaze upon attractive historic castles, and eat some serious scones. I would like to say that I will be journaling every step of our journey in a beautifully crafted, appropriately themed notebook. However, I’m not exactly sure of what my journaling plan will entail.

I just hope that such beautiful cups of tea are in my future! (Via Dispatch from LA)

In kitschy bookstores and gift shops, I spend a lot of time looking through travel journals—fancy ones with maps embossed on their tastefully muted covers or adorably hand-illustrated versions that prompt you to record a favorite sunset or a favorite sandwich from each stop on your trip. I love the idea of journals like these—neatly themed and ready to be filled from cover to cover with all of my fabulous adventures.

Once, I had one of these lovely little travel journals. It was a gift from my mother, who presented me with a map-covered Paris-themed journal before my first trip to France, which I took with my best friend’s family in the summer before I started high school. I wrote in that notebook every day of my trip– due in no small part to the need to take some alone time in the midst of the awkwardness of traveling with someone else’s not-entirely-harmonious family. But unless I was a young Proust (I wasn’t), there was no way in the wide world that I could have filled up that entire journal during one ten-day vacation, and once I got back to the U.S. of A., it seemed strangely anti-climactic to record the details of my suburban summertime in my Parisian notebook. I returned to my old journal, leaving its more metropolitan cousin to sit, 70% empty on my bookshelf.

Personally, I find this journal intimidatingly classy. (Via Paper Chocolate Press)

That’s the thing about pretty travel notebooks. They have high expectations for you — or so I imagine. They make me feel compelled to include a truly nauseating degree of detail: every item that I ate, the route we took from point A to point B, or exactly what the cute girl in the museum said before walking into the portrait gallery. And in the midst of a trip, there isn’t always time for that.

In reality, most of the best journaling I have done while in transit has actually taken in place in my regular old black softcover notebook. While it doesn’t have the same thematic charm as an official travel journal, it also doesn’t come with the same heights of expectation. In my comfortably tatty black journal, I can write a few bullet points or an address, a few elaborate entries about my journeys, and then return to the quotidian without feeling like I am disappointing anyone.

Even in the company of my adorable girlfriend, my travels will never be this cute. (Via Happy Dappy Bits)

Traveling alone during my semester abroad, the aforementioned Moleskine was my only companion in a series of hostels of varying quality. I scribbled about historic landmarks, strange encounters with locals, and my desire to write the scripts for audio tours. I wrote while I ate cobbled-together meals of hummus and digestive biscuits. I wrote to assuage the strange, unending quiet of multiple consecutive weeks spent mostly in my own company.

By contrast, I don’t expect to get very much journaling done on this trip. The purpose for my long flight is spending time with real live people, after all, and while there may occasionally be time on trains and buses, I anticipate that we will use that for sleeping more often than we will use it for writing. That’s okay with my humble little black notebook. It can appreciate a quick note here and there, a three-week-late recap, or a smear of jam that commemorates the time we ate toast at four in the morning.

Please take a moment to appreciate how amazing this is. Cracked Designs)

When I get back from my trip, I will be happy to flip back through one or five or fifteen or fifty pages — however many I happen to get to. The rest I can write down later — or I can remember as lines on an enormous, wall-sized map like my grandfather’s.

How do you document your travels, my dearest queerest diarists? Do you have tips for me as I pack my bags for some transatlantic journaling?

Dear Queer Diary is a column about the joys (and occasionally, the pains) of journaling. We crack open our tiny notebooks and break out the rainbow-colored pens on the regular, so get ready to limber up your writing hands and document all your beautiful feelings!

Header by Rory Midhani

Dear Queer Diary: Top Secret

There is nothing in the definition of the word “diary” to imply that it must be kept secret. According to my dear pal Google, a diary is simply “a book in which one keeps a daily record of events and experiences.” And yet, a non-secret diary is a bit like an ice cream sundae without hot fudge, or Tegan without Sara. I have never shared more than a few sentences of mine. In my book (pun intended!), privacy is one of the reasons that a journal is different from a blog or a personal essay or a letter to your former high school history teacher.

The appeal of a diary is that it is uncensored, full of scandalous anecdotes and withheld opinions that otherwise might never be known. We are under the impression that a person’s diary may be the only place that they tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, without the fear of hurt feelings or not being invited to so-and-sos birthday party. And so, there is something simultaneously taboo and delicious about the idea of reading someone’s journal.

This sweet mountain-themed journal doesn’t have lips, but if it did, they would be sealed. (Via Magpie Moonshine)

If you are concerned about someone reading your journal without your knowledge, it is my pleasure to report that the ever-educational WikiHow has some fine suggestions. Perhaps you are interested in laying a single hair upon the cover of your diary and seeing if it is still in the same position when you return?

To be honest, I think anyone who read my journal would probably be disappointed. Who is hoping to find an exhaustive recounting what I ate for lunch or a lengthy disquisition on the pros and cons of moving to a new apartment? Sure, there might be a few exciting parts. But overall, its secrets are a little more Secret deodorant than Victoria’s Secret.

Because the world must never know that female bodies produce sweat! (Via Koupon Karen)

In spite of the relatively dull nature of my ponderings, I still feel on principle that it is crucial that my diary remain a chamber of secrets (preferably sans killer snake and/or dark wizard).

While part of me believes that our queerness means we are already pushed too frequently into silent, secret corners, at the same time, I think there is actually something liberating about having an entirely safe place to air one’s feelings with the knowledge that no one will ever encounter them. There are plenty of things that I find difficult enough to admit to myself—just imagine how difficult those same things might be to write down on paper knowing someone else could read them.

The public pronouncement of secrets has its own power (everyone say hello to my old obsession, PostSecret), but my journal is a place for working things out carefully, in private before those same thoughts can be released into the wide, wide world.

Other differences between my diary and the Chamber of Secrets: only one is a weapon of attempted genocide. (Via Harry Potter Fanzone)

That’s not to mention the consequences associated with your brother or best friend or significant other-person encountering a secret in your diary that they might be better off not knowing: the impulsive complaint you scribbled after a fight but no longer mean or the secret that’s not yours to tell. David Sedaris, who seems to be a rather prolific diary-writer, told Time that “If you read somebody’s diary, you get what you deserve,” and I cannot argue with his sentiment.

There has been considerable debate online as to whether or not a parent might read a journal belonging to her child with impunity — a topic on which I feel insufficiently qualified to comment given my complete and utter lack of parenting experience. I am fairly sure that my own parents refrained from reading my journal in my youth, though I suspect that this is mostly due to the fact that they well knew that the most dangerous things I was doing were studying European history and pining after unrequited loves. More daring children might provide their parents with more acute temptations — did your parents ever crack open the covers of your dearest, queerest diaries when you were growing up?

I am sure these amazing lesbian mamas would think twice before invading the privacy of their adorable children. (Via Miami Herald)

More to the point, have you ever read someone’s diary? (If so, all I can say is that I hope you have a fan-freaking-tastic excuse for your perfidy. Anyone caught reading my diary will be sentenced to 48 consecutive hours spent watching How To Lose A Guy In Ten Days with only grape popsicles for sustenance.)

Would you ever let anyone read your journal, Straddlers? Who? Why? Under what circumstances? Is this a “when I am dead and in my grave” situation? Or are your middle school ponderings already in the public domain? Spill your secrets!

Dear Queer Diary is a column about the joys (and occasionally, the pains) of journaling. We crack open our tiny notebooks and break out the rainbow-colored pens on the regular, so get ready to limber up your writing hands and document all your beautiful feelings!

Header by Rory Midhani

Dear Queer Diary: Let’s Take This Outside

I would like to begin this column with the requisite admission that I am not at A-Camp. In fact, I have never been to A-Camp, mostly due to practical things like having a job.

While I will admit that, on some level, this reality fills me with a fear of missing out (see: FOMO) so vast and so deep that it rivals the Atlantic Ocean, I am comforted by the realization that, if you are reading this, you are probably not at A-Camp either.

So before either of us sulk off to scribble sadly in our diaries, let us take heart! We have each other! We have our journals! And, most importantly, we have the great outdoors.

I have always been of the opinion that the great outdoors is made especially great by the addition of reading and/or writing material.

Now that spring has sprung (depending, I suppose, on your hemisphere of residence), even the tragically A-Camp-free world is filled with sunshine, flowers, and cute children with lesbian mamas romping through parks in adorably striped shirts. It is time, my dear queer diarists, to abandon your dim, carpeted hidey-holes and venture out onto the verdant carpet of Mother Nature!

Desks are all well and good for the winter months, but once the weather begins to warm up, I am a firm believer that there is no substitute for outdoor journaling. Journaling while outside makes me feel simultaneously like a great philosopher/poet, a student in a brochure for a small liberal arts college, and Rory Gilmore, who, I would like to remind the world, once paid twenty dollars in cold hard cash to reclaim her spot under her favorite study tree. Where else can you gaze up at the sky for inspiration or frolic through fields of wildflowers as you contemplate the mysteries of life?

I’m not sure this was her best haircut. (Via TV Goat)

I am not the only one who has good things to say about outdoor writing — or being outdoors more broadly. In the always great words of Margaret Atwood, “In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.” As much as I enjoy the smell of raspberry almond bath gel, I think I would also like to end every day smelling like dirt — and holding a pen in my hand.

Here are a few ideas for outdoor journaling:

(Via Notebook Stories)

• Add a pressed flower or a leaf to the page you are working on or, if you prefer to leave no trace, draw a picture of said flower or leaf to remember it by.
• Take the first few minutes of your journaling session to describe the sounds around you — which are probably a nice change from the whirring of your computer’s fan or the strange creakings of the man in the apartment above you.
• Imagine the same location 100 years in the past. How big was the tree you are now leaning against then? Would the man on the bench to your right be sporting an extremely dapper bowler hat or checking a gold pocket watch?
• Make a list of cheesy similes to describe the beauty of nature. Then, forgive yourself for the clichés and take a moment to appreciate the way the blooms on the nearest tree really are as lovely as a Sunday morning.

This seems like an idea journaling background. (Via Antony Ohman)

I am aware, of course, that not everyone is on the very best terms with the great outdoors. If you are an indoor-cat-type-person (you know who you are), don’t forget to bring the multiplicity of items you will need to survive in the outdoor world: tissues, for your pollen allergy; sunscreen, to shield you from harmful UV rays; and perhaps even a travel-sized container of hand sanitizer in case you come into any contact with a real live insect. Although an outdoor journaling quest may seem perilous, there is always an off chance that a beautiful journal-toting maiden awaits her fearless lady knight at the edge of the nearest park.

Peer out your windows, Straddlers. Can you see a park bench beckoning? A shady tree? A vacant stoop? Grab your notebooks and head outside into the wide world of journaling greatness!

Dear Queer Diary is a column about the joys (and occasionally, the pains) of journaling. We crack open our tiny notebooks and break out the rainbow-colored pens on the regular, so get ready to limber up your writing hands and document all your beautiful feelings!

Header by Rory Midhani

Dear Queer Diary: I Need A Snack

When I open the cover of my journal, I am filled with a passion for introspection, a desire for self-reflection, and a hunger for… delicious snack foods.

My queer journaling role model, the great Virginia Woolf herself, wisely wrote in A Room of One’s Own that “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.” This sentiment clearly extends to journaling. After all, how can I even begin to think back over the events of my day if my stomach is grumbling for nourishment? Sometimes, one simply cannot journal well without a snack.

It’s hard to go wrong with chocolate.

Luckily, snacking and journaling is not like drinking and driving. In fact, I would argue that the two activities, when done correctly, complement each other quite well. We have already discussed the virtues of journaling with a hot beverage in hand. Now, let us direct our attention to the matter of selecting the perfect food item to fulfill all your journaling and snacking needs.

This food-themed journal may be cute, but it doesn’t do much to satisfy your hunger. (Via Not On The High Street)

1. The first item that we must consider is messiness.

Unless you would like your journal to become a multimedia art piece containing food smears from the various culinary delights you have sampled while filling its pages, the perfect journaling snack is something that can be enjoyed neatly.

Beware chips and salsa, whose remnants resemble the bloodstains on the hands of a Shakespearean villain. Anything coated in cheesedust is a similarly dangerous choice. Yvonne’s list of snacks from her South Texas hometown, delicious though it may be, looks as though it too is full of perils for the neatness-oriented journaler.

This illustration of the favored working foods of famous writers goes to show that literary genius and culinary genius do not always go hand in hand. (Via Wendy MacNaughton)

2. Unless you rely on Siri to record your innermost thoughts and feelings, you will most likely need a snack that leaves one hand free for your writing utensil of choice.

As Wikipedia helpfully explains, the sandwich was the original mode of sustenance for multi-taskers at gaming tables and desks occupied by the British aristocracy. However, in this day and age, I find most sandwiches worth eating far too slippery for easy one-handed consumption (curse you, avocado!). Instead, I like my dear queer diary with a side of nice, chunky granola that I can nibble upon with my right hand as I compose choice phrases with my left.

I certainly would not complain if someone made me an extra large batch of this delicious looking nectar of the oat gods. (Via The Kitchn)

3. Another criterion to keep in mind is a snack’s holding power.

Lucky Charms may be delectable, but those marshmallows might melt away if you spend too long scribbling about your hot date at the local lindy hop. As much as I love ice cream (a generous serving of which may or may not have been savored during the drafting of this very column!), it requires a certain attentiveness on the part of the consumer. If the journaling spirit truly captures you, you do not want to have to worry about whether your snack will still be edible by the time you finish your page.

4. It’s hard to believe that we’ve gotten all the way to number four without mentioning taste.

Let’s face it: taste should probably be the first thing you consider when selecting your snack food of choice. Does the moment call for something sweet? Savory? Salty? Think of yourself as a sommelier, tasked with creating the perfect pairing of snack food and journaling mood. Trader Joe’s dangerously addictive coconut chips may be an appropriate accoutrement to your diary entry about plans for the upcoming summer, while your long list of things to accomplish might be better matched with a plate of baby carrots and hummus. You are going to need protein to get all those things done!

Evidently, no Moleskine is complete without a tinted filter, an artistically posed pair of Ray-Bans, and a tasty-looking sandwich. (Via The Stradivariusisters)

5. The more practical diarists might also consider nutritional value, cost effectiveness, and other such snack-related details.

Personally, I draw the line at these new-fangled snack services that send you individually pre-packaged items in exchange for a monthly fee. Instead, I will save my disposable income for new journals.

Are you hungry yet, my dear queer diarists? Which snacks best complement your diary-writing ways? Have you been known to eat while journaling?

Dear Queer Diary is a column about the joys (and occasionally, the pains) of journaling. We crack open our tiny notebooks and break out the rainbow-colored pens on the regular, so get ready to limber up your writing hands and document all your beautiful feelings!

Header by Rory Midhani

Dear Queer Diary: Scrapbooking Is Not Just For Straight People

Quit it. I can see you there, rolling your eyes and taking a swig from your personal flask of too cool for school juice. Three-dollar pieces of paper, cutesy stickers, and snapshots from Ricky’s third birthday party? Scrapbooking is so stay-at-home mom-circa-2008.

Well, stop right there, my skeptical scrapbook-hater! Because contrary to popular belief, scrapbooking can be just as hip and as queer as that kale smoothie you had for breakfast this morning.

This particular hip scrapbook is technically a “smashbook.” (Via Debra Cooper)

Now we know that queer people can have beautiful weddings, adorable children, and freakishly picturesque suburban lives. But the good news is that, even if you don’t have a spouse, a minivan, or a labradoodle, you still have everything that you need to make an amazing scrapbook.

It should be obvious after the last five billion installments of this column that I love to write in my journal. However, I also really really really like to make things — delicious cakes, book-page themed crafts, and even throw pillows.

I recently made this without a sewing machine and felt more like Laura Ingalls Wilder than I ever could have imagined was possible.

Just one of the many reasons scrapbooking is so fantastic is because it is the perfect union of journaling and thing-making: you are documenting your life and writing down your thoughts and feelings, just like you do in your dearest queerest diary — you’re just doing it with the fun addition of photos, receipts, magazine clippings, old buttons, and whatever else you have lying around your apartment/dorm room/real live mortgage-bearing house.

You need more convincing as to the greatness of the scrapbook? Read this Lamda Literary interview with Ellen Gruber Garvey, who has written on scrapbooks in history, and talks about them revealing “secret histories” whose contents constitute a covert reflection of queer identities. In addition, please note that, according to a somewhat questionable Urban Dictionary entry, “scrapbooking” is an alternative term for scissoring. So there’s that.

Anne Sexton was scrapbooking before it was cool. (Via Poetry Foundation)

It may be true that when you search Pinterest for “lesbian scrapbooking,” not a lot comes up, but I consider it to be my sacred duty to change that. Zine culture is all about cutting and pasting (right?) and way back in the early days of Autostraddle, Laneia was crafting collaged mix CD sleeves I would be proud to include in my scrapbook.

“But capitalism!” you exclaim, still holding desperately to the last vestiges of your scrapbook-related prejudice. Do I truly want to give my hard-earned dollar bills to ginormous Utah-based craft conglomerates that actively promote “family” values? No, I suppose you might not.

The good news is that although there are a lot of scrapbook-related products out there in the world—and yes, I could spend hours in the aisles of Michaels admiring printed papers and washi tape — those three-dimensional stickers and special star-shaped brads are not necessary for a successful scrapbooking experience. The best parts of a scrapbook are the things you already have—the note she slipped you across the library table, the receipt from your first date, or your best friend’s new business card. Scrapbooking thrives on the artifacts of your life that would otherwise get tossed in an envelope or a drawer or the recycling bin.

For those who are too lazy to cut out their own paper, there is Project Life. (Via Caiti)

When I was in high school, I spent hours crafting layouts in 18 x 24 inch portfolio books that I filled with clippings from my school newspaper, programs from the winter musical, and notes passed in A.P. U.S. History class. Although the binders now dwell in my parents’ house, about 2,000 miles away, when I last went home, I paged through them with my girlfriend, giving her a multimedia tour of the halls of my high school psyche.

Speaking of girlfriends, for the last two Valentine’s Days, I have made mine a scrapbook to document the last twelve months of our romantic board-game-playing and road-tripping, using old receipts, printed-out Instagram photos, and a bizarre collection of craft supplies that I keep in a plastic tub full of manila envelopes. I love making the scrapbook because it allows me to relive our bookstore dates (sigh!), compile wacky lists (“Teas We Drank That We Loved”) and get glue all over my coffee table (it is still sticky).

Romantic girlfriend scrapbook 2.0.

If I have failed to convince you that “scrapbooker” is a title to be proud of, my dear queer diarists, you can always call yourself something else instead! I am an artistic documenter of queer narratives—a glue-stick genius—a fearless journaling, photo-taking, memory-collecting machine! What are you?

Dear Queer Diary is a column about the joys (and occasionally, the pains) of journaling. We crack open our tiny notebooks and break out the rainbow-colored pens on the regular, so get ready to limber up your writing hands and document all your beautiful feelings! Header by Rory Midhani

Dear Queer Diary: All The Feelings (and Alison Krauss)

Allow me, my dear queer diarists, to set the scene: institutional carpeting, crepe paper décor, and large bowls of Skittles on white plastic folding tables. “When You Say Nothing At All,” by Alison Krauss, plays from rented speakers as 150 slightly sweaty thirteen and fourteen-year-olds sway back and forth like exceptionally awkward algae in a gentle ocean current. From the corner next to the Skittles, you gaze longingly at your crush, who is slow-dancing with a tall boy in your pre-algebra class. When your parents pick you up in the family minivan, they will ask you how the dance was and you will make a noncommittal noise that sounds something like “fine.” You cannot be bothered to converse with the humans who gave you life! You are already planning what you will write in your diary as soon as you get to your poster-plastered bedroom.

I would like to dedicate this photograph to the 1990s. (Via Buzz Sugar)

Although I am sure not all of you fearless journalers were blessed with the same suburban 1990s middle school experience that I hold so fondly in my memory, I am sure you can all relate to the need to write down your woes in your dear queer diary. After all, as one of my favorite pieces of Autostraddle merch (which is currently on sale!) so clearly reminds us, feelings are what journaling is all about! Even now, many years after my last traumatic middle school dance experience (one happy memory involves vacuuming the floor of the cafeteria in a pink fairy costume in my capacity as Student Council Co-Vice-President), my diary is full of feelings. In the last year alone, I have felt:

• “very grumpy and frustrated”
• “fed up with everything. Including my pen, which never works!!!!”
• “like there was more hysterical laughter than usual”
• “hella awkward”
• “somewhat dusty” (I think this was literal, not metaphorical?)

Let’s all take a moment to appreciate the beautiful handwriting with which Straddler Isa documents all the feelings!

Another selection, from July of 2013, attests to the way that I have not lost my seventh-grade capacity for mixed emotions:

“Meh meh meh everyone is silly and annoying and I am going to miss them I guess.”

The above selections speak to the way in which the emotions that most frequently make their way into my diary are more Eeyore than Winnie the Pooh. When, in the words of the Beatles, I find myself in times of trouble and Mother Mary comes to me, the words of wisdom that she frequently whispers are, “Write in your journal.”

Only in animated donkey form can pessimism be so adorable. (Via Disney)

If you’re up on your Autostraddle archive-perusing (who isn’t, these days?), you may have read about writing your feelings before. Real live internet doctors say that writing in a journal can help with depression, which Riese’s diary has described in a number of strange and strangely truthful phrases. As a self-identified English Major For Life, I am basically the farthest thing from a doctor, but I can tell you from my very own experience that writing in my journal generally makes me feel better when I am upset about everything from love to landfills to linguine. And yet, as much as I rely on journaling as a tool to deal with sadness, annoyance, and anger, a quick flip through my notebook indicates that I am far less likely to write when everything’s coming up roses and sunshine and daffodils.

My favorite face may be “hysterical.” (Via SF Insights)

Why is this? Am I going to look back on my journals and determine that my twenties were far less lovely and wonderful than they truly are? I don’t think so. After all, there is the entry where I talk about how “I love, I love, I love” my girlfriend, the pages dedicated to the books I am reading, and even the part where I describe the delicious dinner that I enjoyed the night before. Although I can accept that my journals may contain more angst than elation, my own personal goal will be to try and balance them a teeny tiny bit better in the coming months. Why not take a moment to write about how delicious those Skittles were before launching into drama and heartbreak of the middle school dance?

This skunk is happy! (Via Jenny’s Sketchbook)

What is the ratio of happy to sad in your journals, my dear queer diarists? What emotion most accurately describes your most recent journal entry? Most importantly, do you miss slow dancing to Alison Krauss as much as I do?

Dear Queer Diary is a column about the joys (and occasionally, the pains) of journaling. We crack open our tiny notebooks and break out the rainbow-colored pens on the regular, so get ready to limber up your writing hands and document all your beautiful feelings! Header by Rory Midhani