poll: online journals

World's Cutest Urban Tapestry Fan
The Suttons' grandson wearing an Urban Tapestry
" Sushi and High tea" t-shirt. Cuuute! :-)


I've been posting Blatherings for about seven years now. Some years, I've only posted a few times a month, others I've posted daily. I have found the archives useful from time to time when I want to look up information like the date of a particular event, or the name of someone I met once years ago at a convention.

I don't post Everything in my journal, though I'm sure some people assume I do. It surprises me how many people assume that an online journal is an accurate reflection of what goes on in someone's life. It may be the case for some people, but unless the author makes a habit of posting frank and personal updates constantly throughout the day, every day, a lot of life complexity is going to be filtered out.

I've never been a huge fan of overly-detailed journals which focus exclusively on external micro-events (e.g. "I woke up at 6:12 a.m. and I had breakfast and then my cat hacked up a hairball as big as my head and then I cut my toenails and called my friend Sophia and then I read the newspaper..." etc.) unless they are unusually well-written or include interesting descriptions of food. :-)

Then again, it surprises me what some people do post in their journals with the false assumption of privacy. I always assume that anyone I write about will eventually find out what I have written, even if the page is password-protected or a "locked entry" ( here's an example of one Livejournal user whose so-called locked entries were reposted as public entries).

I originally began Blatherings to keep in touch with distant friends, but have since come to prefer more traditional methods for maintaining contact with friends. From my Web statistics and private e-mail messages, it's clear to me that far more people lurk than post comments. Which is fine, of course. I tend to do that as well, these days more because of physical limitations.

I can't claim I post entirely for myself; if that was the case, then why not keep a completely private journal? With an audience in mind, I post for different reasons, including: venting, writing exercise, summarizing an event for my own archives, self-therapy, and creativity inspiration. And sometimes out of curiosity or research for a potential article (I promise not to use any real names or post URLs without permission)... hence the following survey.

Questions for all those who have online journals of one sort or another...

How long have you been posting?
Why did you start your journal?
Are you basically happy with it?
(Is it achieving what you had originally hoped?)

Feel free to answer in your own online journal instead of the message board, but please do post a URL so I can find your entry.

March 2004 comments: Read | Post | Livejournal