Guest Post by Donna Otter a response to “Dear Diaries”

Donna Otter is a really fun friend, a writer who makes you laugh, a performance artist, and (drum roll please… ) a Moth Story Hour podcast GrandSLAM winner!

Per The Moth website: “Donna Otter has been curious about how to say “You won’t believe what happened today!” ever since she started that first gold-keyed diary in 5th grade. (she’s now on #102). She started listening to the Moth podcast in Portland, Oregon and wrote in her journal, “I wonder if I could ever tell a Moth story?” Along with being a Moth regular, she’s read out of her teen diary for Mortifed, and told stories at 7 Deadly Sins and Pickathon. Check her out at www.patreon.com/DonnaOtter. “

Photo is from Bill and my visit in March to Springville, CA , where Donna now lives with her mom, Barb (also a delightful storyteller). She’s standing beside her bins of numbered journals in her amazing artful studio.

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We Are Close, my journal, and me… 

I pretty much take her everywhere — important that she can fit in my purse. She is my companion and my campfire, my security blanket and my map of days. She holds my life in numbered notebooks stored chronologically in numbered bins which could be carried, if there’s time, in case of flood or fire.

The relationship is dependent. I’ve tried experimenting with breaks, taking space, seeing if something else would develop, if I didn’t spill it all out here. But what is happening instead, is that something develops out of here, from here. Even if I’m running short of time, I will still come here. Is it a discipline? It doesn’t feel like it. It is mostly effortless, though there are times I push myself to get the story down, the details. I do it for the diary. I do it for myself. I do it for you. A braid of memory."