'Confessional culture' draws a crowd
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"In school, surrounded by classmates who had known me virtually my whole life, my differences were never questioned. While I may not have felt understood, I did feel accepted. As an adult I encountered far more people who didn't get me than did, and as a result it was difficult to break into new groups, particularly in work situations where the staff had existing relationships with one another. Eventually being the chronic outsider left me feeling isolated and paranoid and things usually ended badly.
"After leaving a job impulsively, I found myself underemployed for over a year. Finally I landed a job at an independent bookseller. It should have been my dream job, but I was miserable. There were only a couple people on the staff whom I felt comfortable with, the perfectionist in me hated that there was no way I could know every book inside and out, and reading, a favorite pastime, became work. Within a couple months, I had plunged into a suicidal depression.
"I came into work and found an advance copy of 'Queen of the Oddballs' waiting for me. I started reading and felt an immediate connection. Hillary Carlip was the person I wanted to be – a person I didn't even realize was possible! I still wanted to kill myself, but maybe I'd wait until I finished the book. By the time I was done, I didn't want to die. This stranger's memoir gave me some hope. Her book bought me enough time to get help. I felt compelled to write to her and started an e-mail friendship that still helps me through the bad days."
Many confession or personal story-centered projects are out there now, on many media: websites, radio shows, magazines, etc. The Internet is plagued with unmoderated confession sites, but the projects listed below are all mediated, edited, or both.
FOUND magazine ( http://foundmagazine.com/)
Jason Bitner, cofounder of FOUND magazine, became fascinated with the lives of others while working for a recycling center in the Chicago suburbs as a teenager. As he sorted newsprint from coated stock, he came across letters, notes, and to-do lists. He started reading them. "I know my own life really well," Mr. Bitner says. "But I don't get the sense I understand the lives of others who are in a different place." The scraps he and others find and publish in FOUND give him an idea of what other people are up to. Read the Monitor story on FOUND.
Fresh Yarn ( http://www.freshyarn.com/)
On the website, Hillary Carlip describes her project of personal essays like this: "You'll read stories from this emerging genre that are humorous, provocative, dramatic, simple, sweet, raunchy, intimate, bold – and all true."
Mortified ( http://getmortified.com/)
"Mortified" is a stage show traveling from coast to coast, in which men and women read from their embarrassing (or humiliating) teenage diaries or letters. On the website, it bills itself as a "a comic excavation of teen-angst artifacts." Read the Monitor story on Mortified.
Post Secret ( http://post secret.blogspot.com/)
Frank Warren updates his site every Sunday, sticking closely to its mission statement: "Post Secret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard." Selected secrets have been compiled in three books: "Post Secret," "My Secret" and "The Secret Lives of Men and Women."
StoryCorps ( http://storycorps.net/)
Stories from this audio project can be heard often on public radio stations. StoryCorps travels the country, setting up a booth where friends and family can come in and record one another's stories. Producers hope the recordings, stored at the Library of Congress, will create an oral history of America.
This American Life ( http://www.thisamericanlife.com/)
"This American Life" is a weekly one-hour radio program hosted by Ira Glass and carried by more than 500 public radio stations across the country. It uses various formats – from reported pieces to audio essays – to tell stories from all walks of American life.
[Editor's note: The original version contained links to material that did not meet Monitor standards.]
