I noticed these at Barnes & Noble the other day. They are fancily designed and bound journals that look a lot like books. They have flowery covers and actual titles, like "Dreams: a Guided Journal For Your Thoughts and Inspirations". I picked one up and looked inside, finding artsy lined pages with titles of their own, telling the writer where to put "ideas for the future" and "names of your best friends".

Is it just me, or did the sheep factor just go up a notch?

I can't fathom the type of person who would buy one of these and actually use it, obeying some anonymous author's every whim and idea about what should be written in a personal account of one's life. I can't believe a journal even has an author!

It seems that people's need for someone else to dictate their lives and ideas is extending to the personal realm, now, if it hasn't already, at least for the mass-produced TV-attention-span types who shop at Barnes & Noble. It saddens and depresses me to see that, along with everything else, someone is now trying to tell us what to write.

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