ORIGINAL POST DATE: December 6, 2005

I was recently directed to the PostSecret weblog (or perhaps I should say blog phenomenon) where the above post card image was posted. I had not heard about this blog before now, due most likely to the mental health media blackout that I am currently operating under, but it's not due to lack of coverage since this blog has been featured on both NPR and the Observer, and has had visitors numbering in the millions (15,361,916 and counting!). I may be a little late to the party, but it was worth the visit.

The concept is simple enough:

"You are invited to anonymously contribute your secrets to PostSecret. Each secret can be a regret, hope, funny experience, unseen kindness, fantasy, belief, fear, betrayal, erotic desire, feeling, confession, or childhood humiliation. Reveal anything - as long as it is true and you have never shared it with anyone before."

The results are far from simple though, resulting in images that are amusing and disturbing. My visit to the PostSecret web site left me feeling voyeuristic yet at the same time like I had made a connection with these anonymous contributors. It was certainly the most interesting blog visit I have had so far.

I went to PostSecret because of the Moleskineⁱ Writing Project post card that someone had submitted with the statement: "I buy expensive notebooks then I realize I have nothing interesting to write (still I buy them)." I found this "confession of Moleskine addict" particularly interesting, because for many years I bought blank books myself without ever using them. Additionally, I have often heard from Moleskine users that because they cost a little more than your average notebook and because they are carefully made and bound like a real book that people are a bit intimidated by writing in them. The sense I have is that because of the price and the quality of the notebook people feel they are somehow not up to the task of filling the pages. Maybe too it is the Moleskine Marketing Mojo at work here - aka "I'm no Hemmingway" or "I'm no Van Gogh" - that makes people feel a little less than worthy.

If you feel a sense of unworthiness when confronted with a clean crisp brandy-new Moleskine, if you don't dive right in and get to the task of filling those pages with whatever flows out of your head through your hand, then I'm here to tell you the secret: Despite all the hype, despite all the cultural hoo-ha, when it's just you and your Moleskine, it's a notebook just like any other. It has pages that need filling, and time is flying by in your life, so you might as well get to work. Feeling unworthy about what you think you have to say in your Moleskine? Write about your feelings of unworthiness in your Moleskine! Think you will start writing and then will hate what you write, thus ruining your new Moleskine? Take your pen and scribble all over the first few pages of your notebook - see, now it is ruined, so it's only uphill from there on out.

The truth is, very few of us were born to be a Hemmingway or a Van Gogh. Creative genius is funny that way, it only visits the few. But creative genius drove Hemmingway to drink, and Van Gogh, well it made him a bit mad didn't it. We all have something unique to offer, something that is all our own, and for some unexplainable reason it makes us feel better about everything when we get that out on paper. I know that may sound trite, but it is a fact that no two people will see the same thing in the same way, so I mean it from a purely practical point of view. You can't escape your uniqueness, so as long as you write something that comes directly from your own perspective it will carry that quality with it.

If you have bought yourself a really nice notebook like a Moleskine you owe it to yourself to use it for whatever you have to express. Repeat after me: "I am worthy of my Moleskine. I am worthy of my Moleskine. I am worthy of my Moleskine."

Now get to work!

HERE is the best book on writing I have found so far.

Thanks to Stephanie for introducing me to PostSecret!