Thursday 21 January 2010

Naming my Moleskine

When I first started keeping a diary, I used to start with traditional "Dear Diary". Then as my diaries became journals, I stopped doing it. It just felt silly to start with a "Dear Diary" so I just start with a date.
I don't usually name objects (except Teddy bears obviously), but when I got my netbook, I knew *he* had to have a name. He is Finn, and that's how I refer to him, and I totally adore him.
Anne Frank calls her diary, Kitty. She has turned her diary into an actual person, and she writes as if confiding into one friend she can trust with her innermost thoughts. It made me wonder if I should give my journals name(s). I don't share all my thoughts with anyone. Never have, and I doubt I ever will. In journals, I try to be as honest as possible, but sometime there is automatic censorship. So I wondered, would it make a difference, if I felt I was writing to a friend?
My journals are extremely important to me, so I certainly don't see them as mere objects. But to name them would be to personalise them. Anne consistently called her diaries "Kitty" because she was actually writing letters to a friend. But I see each of my journal as individual entities, though connected. It would feel totally wrong to call them all by same names, and yet you can't get close to many different friends.
So as I was writing in my current moleskine that I use for private journaling yesterday, I wondered if *she* should have a name. I haven't decided yet. Perhaps it is easier to write to a journal than a person, even if fictional. I don't know.
How about you? Do you ever name your journals? Does it make the experience of sharing your soul any easier?

14 comments:

  1. I've never thought of this, I just call my journal wee moleskin, my work moleskin's just my workbook and then there's my moleskine notebook diary which I love too. I wonder what kind of name would suit them, I'm not entirely sure whether my journal is a he or a she though.
    Jade

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  2. Interesting concept. I, too, use a moleskine and just date my entries....but perhaps a name would make it even more personal. My nickname for my wife is Sweetness; perhaps this is a name that I can use forf my journal writing.

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  3. Jade,
    I have a further problem of having more than one journal. But I think I feel journals as "she".

    Joey,
    Interesting. But if you call your diary by your wife's nickname, wouldn't you feel like you are talking to your wife?

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  4. I don't name my journals but I have taken to numbering them in order to keep them in order. When I used Moleskein Cahiers this summer I added odd titles to them. One of them was "All the flavor you love in under 100 calories." I once considered addressing my journals to a friend like Ann Frank did but I couldn't get used to writing to a friend who never answered me back. It is easier to write the way I think.

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  5. I usually refer to my journal as 'my journal' but when I write it's usually me talking to myself. I use 'I' most of the time but occasionally 'you' to reflect back on myself from a different point of view. I don't think I would give it a name, but it might help. I write like I'm talking to someone else, but that someone is really just another version of myself I guess.

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  6. Jessi,

    I haven't gotten around to naming it. In fact, after a while I came to a conclusion that name thing won't work for me, so journal it is :-)

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  7. My Filofax is called Dougie, I actually looked up this post because I was looking for a name for my moleskine. I'm about a quarter way through and thought it was time :)

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