![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Skewed perspective.
Jun. 27th, 2006 06:22 pmI'm contemplating making a deliberate point of posting daily. I read a good chunk of the journal archive today and realized that it really doesn't reflect the past few years very well.
Why?
1) I tend to post only when in certain thoughtful/contemplative moods.
2) I only post when I have the time and energy. If my life is sufficiently busy or in a sufficient state of tumult, the posts vanish.
3) I've never tried to keep this journal in a "yesterday I did this, today I did that" timeline-style format.
4) Although I have never successfully kept an offline journal, knowing that I have an audience inflicts severe skewing upon what I will and won't say.
5) I write my journal with the confidence born of familiarity. Those who read it, with rare exception, knew me for years before I ever saw this thing, and they know the contexts that I don't write down.
...and there are probably other reasons that haven't occurred to me.
And so I read and realize that the largest decisions in my life over these past years aren't reflected in it... or, if they are, they are reflected as if in a shadowed glass. I explain "this is what I did", but I do not say why. Sometimes, there is not even that.
Centuries hence, if anyone reads this, I will doubtlessly strike them as fickle, hostile, loving, sad, proud, defiant, and shy all by turns, and it will not make much sense. But at least there will be this moment, now, when I stopped and said, "I know it doesn't make sense, but it was the best that I could do."
This is far from a reel of film. It isn't even a snapshot or a sketch. It's just a silhouette, and there are other things in the way to break up the outlines. And I know it doesn't make sense, but it is the best that I can do.
Why?
1) I tend to post only when in certain thoughtful/contemplative moods.
2) I only post when I have the time and energy. If my life is sufficiently busy or in a sufficient state of tumult, the posts vanish.
3) I've never tried to keep this journal in a "yesterday I did this, today I did that" timeline-style format.
4) Although I have never successfully kept an offline journal, knowing that I have an audience inflicts severe skewing upon what I will and won't say.
5) I write my journal with the confidence born of familiarity. Those who read it, with rare exception, knew me for years before I ever saw this thing, and they know the contexts that I don't write down.
...and there are probably other reasons that haven't occurred to me.
And so I read and realize that the largest decisions in my life over these past years aren't reflected in it... or, if they are, they are reflected as if in a shadowed glass. I explain "this is what I did", but I do not say why. Sometimes, there is not even that.
Centuries hence, if anyone reads this, I will doubtlessly strike them as fickle, hostile, loving, sad, proud, defiant, and shy all by turns, and it will not make much sense. But at least there will be this moment, now, when I stopped and said, "I know it doesn't make sense, but it was the best that I could do."
This is far from a reel of film. It isn't even a snapshot or a sketch. It's just a silhouette, and there are other things in the way to break up the outlines. And I know it doesn't make sense, but it is the best that I can do.
