Throughout my life, I've had many notebooks and diaries. Some have been about recording thoughts, while others were about recording memories (two different purposes, I believe.) I think the purpose behind a notebook can vary, depending on the person. For me, I sometimes look back on old entries and reminisce on how I was feeling and who I was during that time. I don't view it as a narcissistic habit, but rather a somewhat effective way of keeping the past alive. As Didion pointed out, we can forget exactly what it felt like to be ourselves during a certain time frame, but keeping a record can help bring those memories back to the forefront of our thoughts.
Social media serves a completely different purpose, though. Tweets and status updates are relatively easy to compose, as it doesn't take much thought to type up, "Getting pizza for dinner. Score!" Although these little thoughts are typically shared with hundreds of other people, they rarely make lasting impacts. I don't know what my status update was last Friday, nor do I care. I may tweet about my annoyance over poor customer service at a store, and it may even get a few stars and retweets, but that isn't really something I will look back at one day and feel a surge of nostalgia over.
No, the things I actually take time to commit to pen and paper are what I remember the best. I suppose the same can be accomplished with blogs, although I believe those are still often too public to express true, uncensored feelings. In this way, I believe Didion would probably have a blog of her own, where she could post her essays. She would probably keep her notebooks, though, with all her personal memory cues and not-quite-facts.
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