Teen Diary FAQ

Q: How do I start at the beginning of the diary?
A: Click here. The newest posts will be at the top, so you will need to scroll all the way down. The very first entry was on May 24, 2008, so look for that. If it's not on the page, click on "older posts" at the bottom to find it.

Q: Is this diary for real?
A: Yes, I was a sensitive teenager who paused between running track and cross country and acting in high school musicals to write down his feelings.

Q: Did you change anybody's names in it?
A: Yes, everybody's, in fact.

Q: How long did you write the diary?
A: From the start of my junior year in high school in 1977, through my college years, my twenties and into my early thirties.

Q: Why did you quit?
A: I was a circulation manager for a magazine in my early thirties. It did not exactly provide material for compelling writing.

Q: Isn't diary-writing a compulsive behavior, much like running?
A: Yes. I gave them both up, so now all my neuroses are hitching on some highway in Nebraska, along with my cardiovascular health.

Q: Did you re-read the diary before starting to blog about it?
A: No, I am reading for the first time in 30 years, along with you. I am re-discovering what a dork I was only moments before you do.

Q: What color was your diary? Did it have a nice floral print?
A: You will find this hard to believe, but it's true. I did not buy an actual book to write in until after college. My teen/college diary consists of a three-inch high stack of loose, unlined printer paper. I estimate it's about 700 pages. I keep it together in a plastic bag.

Q: Did it never occur to you that this was wack?
A: What is this "wack" you speak of?

Q: How did you ever think you would read it if it wasn't bound in a book? Didn't it ever occur to you that it would eventually start falling apart or get lost if it was just loose?
A: This probably says something insightful about me in my youth, but the thought never occurred to me. The concept of reading the diary later, although that is the only real point of a diary, never occurred to me. I just wrote the thing page by page and stuck it away.

Q: What do you expect to gain by reading your teenage thoughts?
A: Memory is a fluid thing. We think of it as fixed, but it isn't. I remember my teen years in a certain way. I hope to be both amused by my naivete and surprised by the depths of my insight at such a young age. But I'll settle for amused.

Q: Will there be sex?
A: If there is, my memory is worse than I thought. But you will be the first to hear about it.