The Artifice of Online Journals

I miss writing personal posts. It's not necessarily material that's engaging reading for other people (and likely to be labeled as "emo") but there's a certain sense of relief when you write in a journal.

Publishing your journal entries, however, is a different animal from simply keeping a diary and never showing it to anyone. Your post is out in the open for everyone to read and there are some material you don't want to divulge to the world. It might involve the confidentiality of the office, a criticism of someone in your social circle, or outing your crush.

A juggling act is involved as the freedom of privacy and the responsibilities of public posting are at a constant war with each other.

The option to make this a private post and never reveal it to anyone is available--especially with the innovation of blogs in the past few years--but here's an admission that I've always known. I crave attention and I want to be read. I want to gain your sympathy, your praise, your trust. On a certain level, it's personal propaganda.

But another reason I'm writing this is so that a year from now, I can look back at what I've written and observed how I've changed (or remained the same). And I don't want to do it by going through obscure file names and folders, or have to deal with lost back-ups and outdated hard drives.