Just expanding thoughts from a comment I made elsewhere. A friend just deleted a bunch of entries from his journal citing that he thought they had no purpose nor were of any interest. This got me thinking about my journaling history, about how much I rather enjoy my blog now that there is more than a year of entries, including my back dated entries from other sources. I particularly like the easy reference tool in my sidebar that displays entries from 'On this day in...' in my journaling history. I keep thinking about, what if I manage to stick with this for an extended period of time? I mean a really long time? Think of what a unique perspective my child or grandchild will gain about me and my personality, my experience. They will have a glimpse at my life before they were here. I plan on using this space to well document my singular pregnancy, which they can read for themselves my transformation and struggles and joys in my life transitions. Even the mundane that I revel in and celebrate in my journal will be informative and fascinating to my progeny. I didn't know any of my grandparents all that well, to the point that it saddens and angers me that I was not able to foster a relationship with them. I lacked the foresight when I was so much younger to value the time and experiences I had with them, to question them, to learn from them, even to know the simple things of their daily life that they enjoyed. I am fascinated by personal and family histories. I've picked up tidbits here and there of my own family, odd little quirks like how my grandmother who went by the name Millie changed her name from Amelia to Mildred, an odd choice if you ask me, but as to why she did that, I do not know. There are these small pieces I know. Then there are my brothers who seem to care less and can't even name all of our immediate cousin's names. Do they just not care? Do they lack any curiosity or pride for the history? I share these pieces of information with them and they are surprised that I even have this knowledge. I only wish I had more, I wish I had a glimpse like this into their thoughts and what they did. I would be neat to know these things, not just second hand, or someone else's interpretation, but first hand, in their own words. A while ago, while I was unemployed, I started filling in the most basic family information, for as far back as I could remember off hand, into an online ancestry web site (actually ancestry.com). I would like to rally immediate family and close relatives to fill out their information about themselves, birthdates, marriage anniversaries, there is even ample space to insert other information about yourself into the pages. The aunts and uncles would have a better memory for information about the extended family. We could pool together our bits of knowledge and stories and we would all benefit from it. In high school, in my French class actually, for an assignment learning all the various familial names, I researched and created a rather large extended family tree. Smiley faces with bow ties for males, smiley faces with bows on their heads for females. If I remember correctly the given names were fairly complete for five or six generations. The next time I am at home, I need to dig this out, I know my mom put it away with photo albums and related family paraphernalia. I just need the list of names and how they relate, I do not need to take it away from her. My journal is, yes a very narcissistic exercise, but also a way to leave a trace of myself and my thoughts, my daily life, my politics, my food, my hedonism, my complaints, for some future curiosity and interest. In my head and in my own words. So, keep your journals, even the content you feel is boring or uniteresting.