When I was a teen, I kept a diary of my daily life. I still have the volumes and they’re pretty boring. I wasn’t ready to bare my soul then, even though there was a lot to bare. I think I kept them as a way of rewriting my life, cleaning it up. If I didn’t write the bad stuff, it didn’t really happen.

I kept up these intermittent diary entries all through my teens. I thought I would hand them down to my children, that they’d offer some insight, maybe become precious family heirlooms. I thought I was doing something grand but I wasn’t. My kids have never shown the slightest interest in them.

Sometimes I think about what will become of my diaries after I’m dead and I fantasize about someone running into them at a Goodwill, picking them up for song, and finding something profound in them.

They can’t believe their luck. Such a remarkable find! They post about them online, maybe make a YouTube or TikTok video doing a readalong, and I become famous in death.

I know that this is a pipe dream. I know they’ll probably end up in a garbage bag with the rest of my stuff, add to a landfill somewhere and, hopefully, wind up lining nests or burrows.

Yes. I like that. If I can’t inspire the coming generations, I can, at least, keep them warm.