All About Me and PostSecret

Blog No. 5: Tell All but Tell No One

I picked up a book the other day at Border's. It was called All About Me but it had no story. It had questions and blanks. The description of this text is:

With questions you not only reveal your curiosity to others, you also invite others to express their feelings, wishes, and fears; you show a genuine interest in and respect for their lives. This book is a neutral tool that allows you to comfortably ask and answer questions with friends, partners, family, colleagues, chance acquaintances—or simply with yourself…

This book is dedicated to everyone who has not asked enough questions of others, and to those who have never been asked.

—Philipp Keel

So, I figured it might be useful to help me define some of my indecisions onto pen and paper.

When I got to doing this book, it really felt like an over glorified form of a Myspace bulletin survey. However, when I got past the basic questions, (name, where were you born, what color do you usually wear), I got to the more insightful ones. What would be the first step toward resolving poverty in your opinion? How would you describe God? Death? Those types of questions I left unanswered until I fully thought about the exact answer I would give.

Then I get to these personal ones:

If your father wasn't around, who would you want to be as your father?

Describe your most romantic experience.

Who is a friend you would like to be closer to?

I know the answers to these questions. Thing is, there is something about writing them on paper that makes it more real, more official, more alive. Granted, this was my point all along. I didn't think I had unintended consequences to writing in this book. I mulled it around in my head whether or not I would actually fill in the answer that was in my mind…

So I said, "SCREW IT!" and, immediately, the book became a diary.

My rationality: In the wrong hands, people will know how to screw with my head, but, in the right hands, anyone who was curious enough to read it would know a lot more about me.

This book has some real potential.

…

Then it got me thinking…

I was recently shown a video made by the author of PostSecret of basically random people on the street telling the video camera some of their secrets. Piper had taken a couple of quotes from that video and made it her status on Facebook. I looked on to see the website, which I got kind of confused because I thought each entry was supposed to be comedic. The blog consists of actual handmade postcards from anonymous people, each with a short description of a secret or a feeling they never said out loud. Only after I reread these posts as secrets did I appreciate how inspiring this idea is.

Here are a few that I noticed:

You've been dead and buried for months now. But social networking sites won't stop reminding me that your birthday is on Saturday. I'm sorry. I love you.

I've had two girlfriends I could bring to orgasm by just licking their ears. I've lost contact with both of them.

My best friend committed suicide 13 years ago because his wife cheated on him. My wife of 13 years cheated on me this year. I forgive you both.

So I want to submit a secret.

I'm now basically in the process of trying to come up with a little design for a postcard. I feel that it might be freeing to put a visual of something that's been on my mind into simple words and images. Who knows? Maybe people will find that reading my secret would help them in some way. Maybe some of you out there will want to do this with me…

Either way, I'm curious as to what will result because of this.

Here we go!