The diary without the little lock

Remember those padded-cover teen diaries with the little foldover flap that locked with a key? Maybe they still sell them. I never used one, so I don't know. But those locks were laughable--not even daunting enough to keep out a determined little brother or sister, let alone Mom.

What struck me about them, though, was what that flimsy little lock said: "Private! Not to be read without expressed permission by anyone, and that includes you, Mom!"

But why write a diary just for yourself--or a journal, if there's any real difference? Are there any advantages to writing just to yourself as opposed to writing for others to read? Yes, I think there are. For one thing, it's much easier. Like lounging in your pajamas and slippers, you're completely at ease about what you set down, even if it's peckish, overly dramatic, vitriolic, immature, ungrammatical, misspelled, incoherent, rambling, overstated, stupid, childish, or any other characterization you'd use to describe it, because you can be completely candid. No one will read it but you (if you trust in the efficacy of that little lock, that is). You can truly be yourself.

There's no one to argue with what you say, no comments to consider, no editors to impress, no censorship or libel laws to observe, no toes to worry about stepping on. Your subject matter can be whatever you wish, but it's usually about yourself and your day. Who said what, how they said it, what happened and how it made you feel, and what you might do if it keeps on going the way it seems to be headed. No one will hear you.

You can snicker and curse, confess everything, cry your heart out and laugh till you split your ribs, and nothing bad will happen. The little lock keeps it all inside, tucked away from prying eyes and cruel minds who might take advantage of you or hurt you if they heard the outpourings of your heart.

Further, if you become regular enough in writing privately, you may develop a great sense of freedom, ease, fluency and joy from doing it. You never need to worry about what to say or how to say it; since it won't be read or published anyway, there's no need to edit or revise at all. If you say things you decide you don't mean, no matter; you can chalk it up to your changing moods and go on. Eventually you will probably get to what you really meant about something because it seems to resonate differently as you write it. It seems more true.

So a diary or journal can give you moments of epiphany. You can use it to reflect upon things that happen and better understand what you experience.

In my own experience, journal entries usually began sounding the way I thought I believed or felt about something, but often felt more false as I went on. And in several paragraphs or pages, there would be something I'd notice. "That's not right, that's not accurate, that's not the way it really is," I'd think. And I would dig down a little deeper, strip away the rationalizing and ego props, and reverse my direction. It was as ridiculous to lie to my journal as to try to lie in prayer; who would I be kidding, anyway?

Therefore, I still believe that personal, private writing does have advantages. But it has disadvantages also. I earlier noted here how my journal effectively sealed off my writing for publication, stifled my manuscript writing completely for many years. After a time I lost all interest in trying to write for others to read.

And I also didn't realize that by writing solely for my own reflection for so long, I had lost my "public" voice. What used to be done with conversational ease became a traumatic experience when I first tried to put my thoughts into words even for this blog. I found I had stage fright. I was suddenly aware, My God, someone else might actually read this! For the first time in ages, I felt the need to edit, to revise. I had to force myself to get through that first post (June 12). My mind was filled with imaginary readers.

I didn't know then that it doesn't really happen that way with blogs. Unless you really promote them and play games with link-swapping and spider-baiting, there's no vast readership out there just waiting to pounce on your vulnerability. People have their own concerns and in most cases couldn't care less what a newbie might stammer out. My first week I got 95 hits, but only nine legitimate visits (the other 86 were me, checking and playing with posts and settings).

Those nine visitors all came on June 21 for some strange reason. Maybe I had a popular blog ahead of mine, and rode that writer's coattails onto mine, since they all came from my fellow bloggers at this host site. At least that's what I suspect.

What I noticed most about the difference between writing a "journal" online and writing my longhand journal to myself, however, wasn't only that I lost my fluency and natural ease and have to gradually find my public "voice," but was rather that my content changed drastically. I felt I had no reason to voice things I scribbled unabashed to myself longhand, and really private thoughts, whatever those are, had little place here. No, I decided, I wanted to behave myself more in public, however few that public may be. And I didn't want to bore others with either personal war stories or whines and tattletales. I'll keep those in my "locked" journal, to myself.

No matter what the blogsites' signup pages say about a blog being "anything you want it to be, whatever you want to say, however you want to say it," blah blah blah, I don't think I'll ever write here with the abandon of my journal. How could I? It's not "locked" against being read by others. I suppose I could lock out others and make it completely inaccessible, but what's the point of that? I already have that venue.

So even though I call this an online journal, I don't expect it to replace my private one. What I think I would like to say in this blog are things I'd like to say across the table at lunch with my friends, in as informal and conversational way as there. It can be my "diary without the little lock."