Uses of online diaries
Sep. 27th, 2002 06:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
triskellianLivejournal, and other online diaries, are this week's hot topic of conversation. Why get one, what to do with it, which username to pick, who to give access to, and so on.
I don't really know why I have one. Still less why I have two, and I haven't yet formulated much of a policy on what I'm doing with them. Here, so far, I'm writing about things that have been in my head during the day (apart from the procrastinating aberrations), and this makes sense, because they way I think about things is very closely related to the way I write about things. I don't know how rare or common this is: I don't know how other people think, but I make sentences and paragraphs. I internally edit the wording of my thoughts to scan better, and I think in words rather than pictures for the most part. There's probably a chicken-and-egg situation going on here with the fact that one of the things I do for a living is editing.
So writing is a natural extension of thinking for me. And I find my thoughts are clearer if I can look at them, and read them back. At the risk of repeating something I read in someone else's LJ, it's easier to understand what I think about something if I can see it written down in front of me.
In my other online diary, there's an element of admitting things to myself, forcing myself to acknowledge them. Until I read the thoughts, they might not exist. My best friend sensibly questions why it's an online diary, rather than a notebook, or a computer file, and I have no real answer for her. I'm pretty certain it's not that I secretly want to be found, and I'm pretty certain I've taken reasonable precautions to make sure it's not. Partly it's because I have easy access to an online diary, without having to carry around a disk or a book, but partly it's because when I started it, I was thinking about this LJ, and thinking that there were things I didn't want to put in it, so using a similar type of journal was an obvious decision.
Which brings me to self-censorship. You can see below that I was lying to this journal before anyone else was reading it. I did it without thinking, caught myself in the act, and publicly accused myself. That was OK, it was a tiny thing. I'm not aware of any other lies in here, but I can't promise there will never be any. How can I tell? There are already lies of omission, of a sort, in that there are things I write about elsewhere, which I won't mention here, and that one entry has been hidden, but there's not much I hide.
As I write this, I think there are only two people reading. That might only be one, because my best friend says she's weaning herself off reading the journals of her real life friends, but the other reader is my other best friend. There's very very little I wouldn't talk about with either of them, in theory, but in practice is different. I'm not sure I'd *talk* to anyone about my grandparents, in the way I've written about them. Maybe that's because I was being self-indulgent, and I wouldn't get away with it if there was a person present, participating. I'm still writing mainly for myself. Does anyone write these things for any other reason, really?![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lathany, I suppose, writes partly to tell her friends about twin news, but she's the exception.
I had a point there, but I'm not sure what it was any more.
So other people might find me now. I don't want to upset them with anything I've written, I don't want to make myself look bad, and I don't want to cause trouble or make anyone's life difficult. If I want to write about something which might break one of those rules, I'll write it somewhere else. It's self-censorship, and my best friend thinks it's dishonest, and I suppose she has a point, but if I'm thinking about something which has one of those effects, and it matters enough to me, I'll talk about it, in the real world. If I'm going to upset someone with something I say, I want to be there when I say it, to soften the blow, to respond to their body language. Or, if they deserve it, to watch the effects ;-) This journal is not a way of communicating with anyone except myself.
Which raises once again the question of why I bother. There's exhibitionism in there, of course, but I hope that's not all. Although it probably is.
The jury is still out. Maybe when I decide what I plan to do here, if there's any aim beyond thinking out loud, I'll be able to decide why I'm doing it.
I don't really know why I have one. Still less why I have two, and I haven't yet formulated much of a policy on what I'm doing with them. Here, so far, I'm writing about things that have been in my head during the day (apart from the procrastinating aberrations), and this makes sense, because they way I think about things is very closely related to the way I write about things. I don't know how rare or common this is: I don't know how other people think, but I make sentences and paragraphs. I internally edit the wording of my thoughts to scan better, and I think in words rather than pictures for the most part. There's probably a chicken-and-egg situation going on here with the fact that one of the things I do for a living is editing.
So writing is a natural extension of thinking for me. And I find my thoughts are clearer if I can look at them, and read them back. At the risk of repeating something I read in someone else's LJ, it's easier to understand what I think about something if I can see it written down in front of me.
In my other online diary, there's an element of admitting things to myself, forcing myself to acknowledge them. Until I read the thoughts, they might not exist. My best friend sensibly questions why it's an online diary, rather than a notebook, or a computer file, and I have no real answer for her. I'm pretty certain it's not that I secretly want to be found, and I'm pretty certain I've taken reasonable precautions to make sure it's not. Partly it's because I have easy access to an online diary, without having to carry around a disk or a book, but partly it's because when I started it, I was thinking about this LJ, and thinking that there were things I didn't want to put in it, so using a similar type of journal was an obvious decision.
Which brings me to self-censorship. You can see below that I was lying to this journal before anyone else was reading it. I did it without thinking, caught myself in the act, and publicly accused myself. That was OK, it was a tiny thing. I'm not aware of any other lies in here, but I can't promise there will never be any. How can I tell? There are already lies of omission, of a sort, in that there are things I write about elsewhere, which I won't mention here, and that one entry has been hidden, but there's not much I hide.
As I write this, I think there are only two people reading. That might only be one, because my best friend says she's weaning herself off reading the journals of her real life friends, but the other reader is my other best friend. There's very very little I wouldn't talk about with either of them, in theory, but in practice is different. I'm not sure I'd *talk* to anyone about my grandparents, in the way I've written about them. Maybe that's because I was being self-indulgent, and I wouldn't get away with it if there was a person present, participating. I'm still writing mainly for myself. Does anyone write these things for any other reason, really?
lathany, I suppose, writes partly to tell her friends about twin news, but she's the exception.I had a point there, but I'm not sure what it was any more.
So other people might find me now. I don't want to upset them with anything I've written, I don't want to make myself look bad, and I don't want to cause trouble or make anyone's life difficult. If I want to write about something which might break one of those rules, I'll write it somewhere else. It's self-censorship, and my best friend thinks it's dishonest, and I suppose she has a point, but if I'm thinking about something which has one of those effects, and it matters enough to me, I'll talk about it, in the real world. If I'm going to upset someone with something I say, I want to be there when I say it, to soften the blow, to respond to their body language. Or, if they deserve it, to watch the effects ;-) This journal is not a way of communicating with anyone except myself.
Which raises once again the question of why I bother. There's exhibitionism in there, of course, but I hope that's not all. Although it probably is.
The jury is still out. Maybe when I decide what I plan to do here, if there's any aim beyond thinking out loud, I'll be able to decide why I'm doing it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Re: Hello
Write what you want to in here. There's something to be said for keeping the peace, but this diary is meant to be your diary, not censored by the presence of other readers.
Just don't be mean to me :)
Hello!
Date: 2002-10-05 03:55 am (UTC)I'm starting to have doubts about the wisdom of America now though - there are pros and there are cons.