Journal #001
Hagatana, Guam
Being one of the first is a big responsibility, but I think I handled it well. I wrote a letter to my grandfather, who I had never met. I promised him that someday, like the journal, I will end up where I belong and that he and I will probably end up great. I left #001 at the Guam International Airport.
Update:
I finally went to the airport a couple months ago to check the lost and found for the journal. They run a tight ship and log all found items in one big book. I scanned the book. No entry. Either an airport employee picked it up and is passing it around or a traveler took it.

For the past eight years, thousands of passersby, travelers and people just like you have stumbled upon a lowly little journal being passed from person to person. Each person who came to possess one of these journals was commissioned to replace the mundane, blank pages with letters, sketches, poems, art and anything else that can be written on or attached to a piece of paper.

The people who came to possess and fill these journals may not have known that they were part of a worldwide experiment that was created by a simple individual with good intentions.

“Someguy”—the moniker that the project’s founder goes by, preferring to withhold his identity in the media—sent out one thousand blank journals to various spots in the United States and across the world in order to spark the imagination of whomever came across them, and to form a sense of kinship with the people who wrote in the same journals.

“I think there are a couple facets with it. One is participating in a project that’s much bigger than any one person could do,” says Someguy. “That’s the great thing about this. No single person could do this, but all of us together can, and that’s what makes it great. There’s something so romantic and so great about a tangible object that’s connecting two people together. So part of it was inspiring creativity in people. Part of it was these random connections. Everyone who participated in these journals is connected to each other through this object. It’s been out there for years, but these journals connect the same community together somehow.”

The 1000 Journals Project was launched in August 2000 in San Francisco. Bathroom walls—the same ones that surround us when we’re on the can, that are often covered with tagging, phone numbers, anecdotes and homoerotic sexual innuendoes—inspired Someguy to start the project. The public, yet anonymous, dialogues scribbled on the bathroom walls at Cal Poly intrigued him, so he began photographing them. He graduated in 1995 with a degree in graphic design, but thought it would be neat if there were a compilation book of everything that he saw. He toyed around with the idea and thought that it would be great if people were given their own books to add their own opinions to the conversation.

Journal #913
Brooklyn, New York
It’s not as easy at it looks. I’ve seen some AMAZING things in the pages of these journals. Just wait until it’s your turn; and it keeps staring at you, calling to you. Put something worthy on these pages to show the world. It’s the albatross around your neck, begging for potential greatness. It becomes your adopted baby, for that time. Or not. Maybe it’s my personal neurosis. It’s scanned. It’s off. It’s all GOOD things. I pass it on with the utmost sentimentality. Take care of her.

Someguy bought a hundred journals and passed them along to family members and friends to start off the project, and then left them at random places like coffee shops, park benches and bus stops. He had stamped instructions inside on what to do with the journals, but as with every experiment, not everything went as planned.

“Keep it as simple as possible, and then it was read it, add to it, and you have twenty-four hours,” explains Someguy. “Which didn’t happen. No one’s going to spend twenty-four hours on [the journal]. It was really just a communications problem. You know, somebody comes across this, how do they figure out what it is, convince them to contribute to it and then convince them to let it go when they’re done. I think it worked well to some extent, but didn’t work well in other instances.”

Although there were instructions inside of the journals, Someguy didn’t want to limit what would eventually happen to them. Some people kept it straightforward, writing personal entries or making playful drawings, posting pictures of their loved ones or writing about a vacation. Others decided to take it to another level, ranging from serious to hilarious. In one journal, a group of friends created a collage of themselves traveling, all the while writing an entry entirely in pirate-speak. One woman chronicled her life and how she dealt with being sexually assaulted. Others, instead of creating their own entries, rummaged through others and either drew funny pictures or wrote cheesy remarks in the entries themselves or in the margins. It was no holds barred, so long as the 220-page journals were returned to Someguy once they were completely filled.

Journal #587
Tucson, Arizona
The journal was given to me in Brooklyn. I then left for Arizona with my girlfriend. Me and the woman are no more, but I finished my part of the journal. I am now sending it to a friend that I hurt so much he is no longer my friend. Hopefully this will make him happy.

New York, New York
It came wrapped in white computer paper bearing my name, without postage, and I immediately knew who it was from, that asshole who I had already forgiven for ruining our friendship, but was still not going to waver in my decision to tell him to fuck off.

Someguy created 1000journals.com so that people could track down the journals to see their whereabouts, and so that whoever is holding a journal can scan pages of their entries and post the scans on the website.

“So the second set of a hundred journals, I actually sent to Australia, Belgium, London, New York, Seattle, Austin and a couple of other places,” says Someguy. “People there each got ten journals and distributed for me. After that, it became sort of a free-for-all. I was getting bombarded with emails, and I said, ‘Anyone who wants one, I’ll just send it to them.’ I’ve distributed [the journals] places, but I think that more people have distributed them than I have. Just in that I might mail it to Tokyo, and that person will go and take it somewhere else.”

Journal #323
Zagreb, Croatia
I left the journal on top of a Croatian mountain (Tuhobic) on July 30th. I hope that someone who cares will find it…
Update:
I visited Tuhobic exactly one year later. The journal was still there. Mountaineers were using it as a sign-in book. So I took it with me and now it is somewhere in Zagreb.

Eventually, Someguy ended up sending out one thousand journals, and ten local, emerging artists were each allowed to design the covers for one hundred of them. Over the past eight years, the journals collectively have reached all fifty states and a little over forty countries. Only thirty journals have been returned to Someguy so far.

However, his efforts have rewarded him. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) will display all of the journals that Someguy received in an exhibit that runs November 1, 2008 through April 5, 2009. “The 1000 Journals Project” book has been published, and a documentary by a Los Angeles native who tries to track down the journals is also in the works.

“When you start something like this, you have no idea how it’s going to turn out, and you’re putting in your own money into it. Since I funded this myself, people have asked me, ‘How did you do it?’ Well, I don’t own any furniture, I don’t drive a nice car, and the TV that I still own today is that big,” says Someguy, while forming the shape of a square that appears to be smaller than a school textbook. “People choose to spend their money how they want to, and I was spending it all on this. And you don’t know how it’s going to turn out. But wow…there’s a book on this project, there’s a documentary, and now there’s going to be a show at the SFMOMA. And that’s kind of bigger than I ever thought it would be. I can say it’s exceeded my expectations, but at the same time, I’d still love to know what happened to those other nine hundred and some journals still out there, floating around.”

Journal #949
Savannah, Georgia
I’m sorry to everyone. I was robbed at gunpoint earlier today. They took my bag. In the bag was my journal. Many apologies.

But why go anonymous? And even then, why choose a moniker like “Someguy” of all names?

“The journal project is and was always about what other people do in the journals,” says Someguy. “I did contribute to journals, but it was never about like ‘This is so-and-so’s 1000 Journals Project.’ This is The 1000 Journals Project and everybody’s a part of it. So I thought, instead of putting my name on the side, I’d sort of go anonymously, and something just struck me funny about it. It’s like, ‘Who did it?’ ‘Some guy did it.’ So now I’ve kind of accepted it as my ‘gangsta’ rap name.”

A lot of the journals are missing, but a good portion of the ones that have a known location are constantly updated on the website, by informing readers where it is or what the latest entry is. It’s gotten to a point where the journals are at such a high demand that people have begun to form waitlists in anticipation of receiving the journal that they want whenever the current holder is done with it. In response, Someguy created 1001journals.com, a website that allows and encourages users to create their very own journal project that has the same feature as the original website.

The exhibit is worth checking out and requires a bit more participation than the average art connoisseur may expect.

“I didn’t want these journals displayed behind glass. I don’t want them treated as a precious object,” says Someguy. “I wanted people who came to the exhibition to be able to participate in the project itself. The way it’s going to be laid out, people can contribute to all of the journals while they’re here at the SFMOMA. Add your two cents because so many people have tried to get a hold of these journals, they’re so hard to get a hold of, now’s your chance to participate.”

Journal #667
Los Angeles, CA
Strange forms of collaboration, these books. Interesting interactions created. I can promise I never would have spoken to “Razzberry Swirl,” a.k.a. Marguerite, without the book as a medium. No matter how surreal the interaction, I can say there is something fantastic about being the catalyst of that interaction (Someguy creates 1000 journals from thin air, sends them out to the world, and they run around wreaking havoc, getting lost at train stations, running with the bulls at Pamplona, sailing around the world, etc. You have created something from nothing).