why I put my journal online


9/1/97

I've kept a journal on and off for a few years: mostly off, as I'd write
an entry and then not write another for months. I mainly wrote when I felt
like I had a problem to sort out.

After reading a few online journals, I got motivated to pick up my blank book
again. I wrote down some everyday things, memories, lists, etc. Somehow
writing about myself in a blank book seems so self-conscious: it just feels so
arrogant and self-centered, although I know that it's not, that lots of people
keep journals. Somehow just seeing my words in my own handwriting feels too
close to the bone -- I want to keep a journal but I want to feel some distance
there too. That probably doesn't make sense, and I'm not sure I know how to
explain it. I don't think I could ever write anything extremely personal in
a journal anyways: I always fear that someone would find it. Not that most
people close to me would likely find any "big secrets" in it that they didn't
already know. But sharing a confidence with someone is different than them
reading your own words -- you can't explain every nuance on paper, and written
words can seem so bare and vulnerable.

So why put a journal on the web so that anyone can read it? Seeing my words in
typeface gives them a bit of a distance for me: it's not like seeing my own
handwriting. Why not just write on the computer then [after all, that's what
Doogie did (by the way, what an embarrassing name)]? With web pages I can add
graphics that I couldn't in word processing, and everything can link together
so well with HTML, which I think is kind of fun: I do all mine on notepad by hand.
It's kind of an adult version of secret codes, which I loved as a kid. I don't
pretend that's all though: deep down there's that urge to assert an existence,
even if on a small scale.

"Writers live their lives twice," I once read in an essay on writing. I think this
is especially true for journal-keepers. For me, keeping a journal not only gives me
a creative outlet, but helps me be reflective, something which often gets put aside
in days of rushing here and there.

I do think people write differently, myself included, on the computer than
on paper. Regardless, though, journaling, whether online or on paper, gives
a record of all those days that otherwise blur together. Without some type of
record, our individual ordinary days are forgotten. And those are the days we have
the most of and can sometimes turn out to be less boring or uneventful than we thought.



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