When's the last time you wrote something that no one else would read?

There’s something about handwriting that can put you right back in the seat where you wrote it. If this idea just flashed the bubbly letters of a high school crush on carefully folded loose leaf paper, you know what I’m talking about.

I recently recovered some notebooks from about 10 years ago. They’re filled with scribbles, half-thoughts, and first drafts of poems. It’s incredibly embarrassing to have ever been 22 years old, but it happens to everyone, and the record of what I gave my attention to in those days is a nice reminder of how many selves we generate while still holding the same through line.

Though I do still journal by hand a few mornings a week, I know there will be less unguarded thoughts the next time I comes across an old box of personal items. For example, I write all drafts of the Review online in the Substack editor, and even some of the notes I take for this or other writing projects has migrated to my phone. What this means is I have a record of the final draft but nothing to show for the negotiations between the idea and the published piece.

That’s just the way we catalog information these days. When we need something, we search our email or our texts or our Google docs and we find what we’re looking for. It’s efficient, but when most of our writing is two-way communication, it’s influenced by the audience, even if it’s just a message to a friend.

The things we used to write in our journals were deeply personal and the passion is what so readily puts us back in those places. Our minds were racing or tears were welling and we had to get down why we were so excited or upset.

And I think that’s why I kept these notebooks. It’s a record of a time that can’t be found in other places. There might be photos and captions on earlier versions of social media, but these inner thoughts and workings are only in these books. These pages are one of one.

I love writing for an audience (and if you’ve got some lead$ on where else I can do that, let me know), but I couldn’t do that without the conversations I have with myself. That’s where I can see myself at work. In most cases, I put these thoughts down and move on, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t happen or weren’t important, and in 10 years I might have a better idea of why that is.

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Did you keep a journal or a diary? Let me know the last time you wrote something only you would read.