The Diary Project: Volume 1.1 - 1.2

Hello, and welcome to a more formal beginning of The Diary Project!

This is the first volume of my diary. I purchased it from a book order form, the kind we used to get on a regular basis in elementary school. My friends and I would pore over them, circling the items we wanted.
We got our parents' help filling them out, and we'd turn them in to our teacher with some money. Then our books would be delivered to us in our classroom. The resulting atmosphere was a beautiful blend of Christmas-day enthusiasm, and library-esque wonder. My very first entry in this diary is about receiving my book orders.

I have now typed up all of my 1998 and 1999 entries. Here are some basic stats: 

1998:

Total number of entries: 29

Top 5 themes/topics:

• School
• Complaining
• Horses
• Holidays
• Books, toys, and Beanie Babies 

Quote of the Year: "And school is terrible. People do dumb things for dumb reasons, too". 

This was on Friday, March 13th. I was not pleased with that day. 

1999:

Total number of entries: 51

Top 5 themes/topics:

• School
• Pets and Possessions
• Horses
• Holidays
• Traveling 

Quote of the Year: "Whooopee!"

My reaction to my parents agreeing to buy me a horse. It is in addition to many entries that included exclamations of "yipee!" "wow!" and "woo-hoo!"

They usually had to do with vacations, field trips, and horses. 

Reflections:

In both 1998 and 1999, I talked a lot about decisions. I decided things, or I was trying to decide them, or I couldn't decide them. It's one of the most striking patterns of verb usage in those two years of writing, especially since looking back on my childhood I don't remember deciding much. As an adult, I kind of figure my parents decided most things for me. But as a child, I didn't feel that way. In my diary, I ruled my world and I decided things - even if they were decisions my parents had influenced or made for me, I expressed them as my own. My parents have always told me they learned early on how much I craved having power to control my own world and my own life, and the fact that in my diaries I express agency and decision-making reflects their efforts. 

Fun observation: 

While typing up my old 1999 entries on my computer, I encountered an excited entry about an upcoming trip to Canada. I had commented some years later on the entry, once again going to Canada. I was typing up these entries while on a train, going to Canada. 

Original entry: March 18th, 1999: I’m going to CANADA! Yippee!

Comment on entry: 5/21/2007: Hey I’m going to Canada! Hell yeah, 9 y/o self!

By the way, I'M IN CANADA! RIGHT NOW! Woohoo!!! 

 

The Diary Project: Introduction

Hello everybody!
I have been meaning to start this project for a while, but various graduate school assignments have monopolized my time until now. Finally, after two shots of whiskey and a glass of mediocre Cabernet Sauvignon, I've typed up the entirety of my diary entries from the year 1998, which I began as an 8-year-old and ended as a 9-year-old. I definitely drank neither whiskey nor wine at that age.
(I currently have the tipsy hiccups. It makes it hard to type).

My latest project is what I am calling "The Diary Project."
I started writing in a journal when I was 8 years old. I called it a diary at the time, because I liked that word better than the word "journal"(although since learning that "diary" implied "daily", I have amended my language to calling my work a "journal").  Since starting on January 26th, 1998, I have kept a journal or diary of some sorts, continually, since I was 8 years old, and I have filled up 8 volumes.
Over the course of the next few months, I intend to read through my entire diary. We will see what I find out about myself. If it was worth writing about back then, what can it tell me now?

My life history - scrawled in various colors of pen and pencil.

My excursion into 1998 has brought me something simultaneously startling and comforting. Somehow, my casual 8-year-old promises have come profoundly true. Here's an excerpt from May 22nd, 1998 (almost exactly 16 years ago):

"Tomorrow I’m going to Montaray. Now I take riding lessons. The first horse I rode for the first 3^^lessons, was Babe. Now I ride Rosie. In Montaray, there’s a horse named Prit. He’s nice. He’s reddish with white frome his forehead to his nose. He’s my best friend. I rode Smokey. He did everything right when you told him! He’s sandy colored with a black mane and tail. Don’t worry, I’ll take you to Montaray.

When I wrote this entry, Monterey was a vacation spot for me and my family. I grew up in Sacramento, and my parents and I would often make the 3.5 hour drive to Monterey for the weekend. And of course I worked in some time to visit horses when we were there. 

In 1998, horseback riding was something new that I was just beginning. Every family vacation involved a ride on a horse for me. And today, my horses are dear, dear friends of mine. 

I moved from Sacramento to Monterey 1 year ago, for graduate school. I moved two of my horses to Pebble Beach Equestrian Center, where I had met Prit as a child. I walk regularly by the stall where I met him. It's usually unoccupied. The trails I went on as a child - today, those are my playground when I have the courage. 

That diary I promised to bring with me 16 years ago is here, in my desk drawer, in a little apartment at the corner of Jefferson and Larkin Streets, Monterey, California. That promise was only made for a weekend vacation, and yet it is still true. Dear diary, I have brought to you Monterey with me. 

It's amazing how we can sometimes be true to ourselves without even realizing it. 

Cantering on Babe. My first canter on her made in into my diary on July 1st, 1998.

Cantering to a jump on Tarquin, October 2013. Pebble Beach, CA, where I met Prit and Smokey as a child. 

 

What's in a name?

"O! be some other name:
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet" ~William Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet, Act II Scene II We had a talk about names the other day- a seemingly fluffy exercise in my weekend workshop class on counseling skills. What is your full name? What's its story? Significance? What's your attachment to it? In groups of four we answered these questions, one person at a time. And for the first time it hit me - hard - what's not in my name. My name is Cortney Copeland. Nice and simple. Nothing hidden there. I was almost Cortney June Copeland, according to an unofficial birth certificate I found during one of my childhood forays into old cabinets. June was my maternal grandmother, though I never knew her. My parents couldn't agree on using that name, and never picked a different one. On all my legal forms I just put a dash through the section for middle name. I might have ended up Cortney June Maska-Copeland, had my mother chosen to keep her name and do one of those hyphenated deals that seem to be popular among couples lately. I could even have been Cortney June Merczejewski-Copeland, had my maternal great-grandparents not been required to Americanize their name when they immigrated to the USA from Poland. Is Cortney June Merczejewski-Copeland really the same person as Cortney Copeland? Because as my name stands, it obfuscates so many realities. The reality of my immigrant roots, of my connection to the pariah side of my family - marginalized by the strong strain of schizophrenia running in their blood, by poverty and "disfunction" among my mentally ill aunts and other relatives. My name hides these things. It erases them from what identifies me. Juliet asks Romeo to "Deny thy father, and refuse thy name." She asks him to turn away from the blood feud tied to being a Montague, as I've been turned away from all things on my mother's side of the family. Granted, I've fared much better in life than Romeo, and I can also understand why he'd want to no longer be a Montague. At least family doesn't practice blood feuds. And we do have Thanksgiving dinner together, schizophrenia and all. I mean this in no way as a statement of absolute opinion on naming decisions. People have their reasons for giving, taking, or leaving a name. But now at least I understand that little twinge of discomfort I feel when somebody I know changes their name for whatever reason - I am still grappling with the changes in mine. What's in a name? The visible bindings that would compel me to call my mother's side of the family my family.