There’s something freeing about confessing things on stage. It’s one of my favorite things about storytelling. When you hear a laugh or get a nod of recognition about some honest detail that you’ve given, whether it’s about an alcoholic parent or eating cookies for breakfast, it feels good. I told a story about getting an STI that was featured on two podcasts. I wrote an article about my man boobs. I’m still proud of both of those things.

My friend Stephen is involved with Mortified, the show where you read from your old journals, and he’s said, “you know if you ever want to do it, let me know.” I don’t think I’ve ever said this to him but the answer is a big fat, “helllllll no.” I just can’t. I’ll overshare on stage but reading from my most private thoughts? That’s off limits.

I started keeping a journal when I was twenty years old. If I recall, in the very first entry I made mention of this being like the closing moments of Doogie Howser, M.D. because I was watching re-runs of that show at the time. I also made mention of having a crush on Claire Danes because I had just seen The Rainmaker.

I was twenty when I was writing that. Twenty, not fourteen. Revealing even that much makes me cringe and I’ve got notebooks full of it (actually they’re black sketchbooks, 5 1/2″ by 8 1/2″).

Journals are private. When you see someone’s journal getting read in a movie, like The Basketball Diaries or Biloxi Blues, it’s portrayed as a betrayal, an invasion of privacy. Because it is.

I’ve said things in my journals that aren’t just embarrassing but also cruel and unfair to friends and family. The point of a journal can often be to write completely uncensored just to see how it feels. You can exorcise thoughts and record yourself exactly as you are in that moment with no judgement.

I have a friend of a friend whose father passed away years ago. After he was gone, the family read his journals and discovered that he had had an affair.

Journals are loaded guns.

I’ve been thinking about all of this after reading just the introduction to The Journals of Spalding Gray. I’m a big Spalding Gray fan and the editor’s note makes mention of the fact that she doesn’t know if he ever wanted his journals read by anyone after his death. The indicator that he did was that he often said “you” in them, as if he was addressing a reader.

The point that the editor makes is that in Spalding Gray’s monologues, he was able to curate his life. He could edit it, change it, embellish, exaggerate. He could reveal it all on his own terms.

The journal is the raw material.

I suppose I could just burn all of my journals one day or stipulate that in my will. No one is to read my notebooks! But I doubt I’ll do either. I also sincerely doubt anyone will ever read them. Fortunately, a lot of it is truly mundane if not mind numbingly boring. So, it’s likely that a reader would lose interest before getting to the unflattering stuff.

This is all predicated upon me becoming a famous author, which is unlikely. But just in case, I’ll state this for the record, in the event of my death, yeah, you can read my journals. I didn’t mean a word of them, though, unless you find something in them that’s funny and interesting. That’s all me, the rest is lies.