Not everyone grooves on uplifting thoughts all the time.
I understand this.
In fact when I was in college there were no Gratitude Journals, that wasn’t a thing like it is today.
Instead we kept what we called Bitch Books. They were nothing special to look at, just spiral notebooks with a theme, however it sounded better to refer to them as Bitch Books.
So we did.
To clarify, we called them this not because we thought of ourselves as bitches, even if we might have been, but because we needed a place to write about our issues, all the wrongs that we felt we’d suffered.
Oy vey!
Granted we also discussed our issues in lengthy conversations with a few people who would now be called your negativity friends [HERE], but often there were hurts that could only be expressed adequately, with the proper amount of collegiate drama, by writing about them ad nauseam in our Bitch Books.
We hid our books from our nosy roommates and unenlightened boyfriends because they could never know what we were really thinking. Heaven forbid there’d be open authentic communication.
We knew that our profs would never see the crap we’d written about them, so many pages of my book were filled with deets of professorial incompetence, stupidity, and hypocrisy. No surprise, huh?
I’d not thought about Bitch Books in decades, and probably wouldn’t have thought about them again, if it weren’t for an advertisement that shows up, unsolicited, on my Instagram feed*.
This intrusive ad confirms that everything old is new again. To wit, let me share a link to today’s version of a Bitch Book.
It’s stylish, something that’s now called a Grievance Journal [HERE], described by Boardwalk Gifts, the purveyor of it, as a “the perfect repository for all your existential angst and daily gripes!”
Which no doubt it is.
And here’s the dealio, which is really where I’m going with this post. For a mere $28.00 you, my little bitches gentle readers, can purchase your very own Grievance Journal in which you, if you feel the need, can write about all the crap that happens to you.
OR, and this is just a thought, you could replicate what we did back in the day and write your angsty unhappiness in an 1 Subject College Ruled Spiral Notebook [HERE] currently available for $3.39 at Target.
It’s your money and your life, of course.
Obviously I don’t know how much bitching you need to do, so please, I encourage you, do what you feel suits you best.
* I’m on Instagram as thespectacledbean [HERE]
QUESTIONS OF THE DAY
Have you ever heard of an old-school Bitch Book or a new-fangled Grievance Journal?
Have you written one? Why or why not?
Did you once have, or do you now have, negativity friends?
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THE SPECTACLED BEAN 