Post Secret

http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

This is, hands down, my favorite website on the internet. I mean, if this was the only website that ever existed I would still pay for internet access to view it. (I exaggerate. But you get the picture.)

I first discovered it when people I knew started posting links on facebook. I remember my first reaction on reading the description was, "A community art project? That sounds awesome..." before I really even knew what it was about. Even on viewing the website, I didn't get at first that these were actual postcards sent to one person who had the task of sorting them and selecting which ones to display on the blog. I found this out later when I saw the PostSecret books in Barnes and Noble.

The books are even more awesome than the website because you can share them with other people. It's such a strange and extraordinary experience to discuss other peoples' anonymous secrets with people you know... I know that sounds weird but it is weird and wonderful and I can't really think what else to say about it. Except that if you haven't picked up a PostSecret book yourself, you are missing out.

I remember whenever I went to Barnes and Noble with Hannah this Spring, we always sat in the corner window by the journals and stationary and read all the PostSecret books. Once, we both decided to write our own secrets on scraps of paper and left them inside the books. I still do that every once in awhile. It's a liberating feeling. I always wonder if anyone ever found them, and what they think.

This past semester, Frank Warren, the creator of PostSecret, gave a presentation at SUNY Binghamton. Amy and I went, and it was the best event I've been to this year. It was at once funny, heartbreaking, and inspiring. Frank talked about how PostSecret got started, shared some stories about some of the postcards he's received, and showed some of the postcards that weren't allowed to be published. Also, of course, the music video for The All American Rejects' "Dirty Little Secret". At the end, members of the audience were invited to the microphone to share their own secrets. One idiot chose that moment to profess his love for the friend he'd brought along with him (poor girl must have been mortified), but mostly it was well worth hearing what people had to say. Of course I would never get up and share my secrets via microphone at the school I go to, but attending the lecture got me to thinking I would like to send in a postcard someday.

A few weeks ago, Sue gave me a copy of My Secret for Christmas. It was so much fun reading each of the postcards inside for the first time, and even more fun reading them again with other people, waiting for their reactions, laughing or sympathizing with them or commenting on them together. The secrets always inspire some really interesting conversations.

Mostly, though, reading the book and having time to think more about it lately since I'm on winter break ... well, I finally have time to create my own postcards, don't I? I think I'm going to contribute to the art project this week. I have plenty of my own secrets, after all, and it'll be fun to write them down and make them into something worth sharing -- anonymously. I've never done anything anonymously before, so that'll be a first. And I've never shared any of the secrets I plan to send in, so that'll be a first. And I've never taken part in a community art project, so that'll be a first.

I think it's worth killing three birds with one stone. Keep an eye out for my secrets!

...not that you'll know they are mine....