How I've changed: perspectives from my private journal
There's something special about a weblog, both due to its interactive nature and due to the chronicle it creates as time goes by. However, the very fact that other people can read what you post alters things. It's the old "observation affecting the subject" thing. Some items of news are too personal to post in a weblog, or perhaps not relevant. I know it's up to the author to decide what is and what isn't relevant, but after a while you tend to write for your audience instead of for yourself. If there's an element of feedback, you respond to it. In that aspect, I totally understand Holly Lisle's decision not to include comments in her current blog.
I have a private journal. It's been on the go since July 2002, on and off: sporadic entries, sometimes only one in a few months, covering nearly two and a half years of my life. Although it doesn't have much merit for reminding me when important events happened (it isn't that kind of diary), I think of it as a slice of me. It's concise but honest enough to supply a vivid picture of how I have changed in that period.
Reading it through, I'm astonished at how little similarity there is between who I am now and the person who stares back at me from those earliest pages of the journal. In July 2002, I was a rather odd sixteen-year-old working on the frayed remains of my first novel. I'd just left Cambridgeshire and was settling into my new abode in Suffolk. My GCSE results were still unknown. My knowledge of writing was hopelessly retarded (struggle through Life of a Falcon, and you'll understand). Inexplicably, I was obsessed with cold and overcast weather, with lots of winter trees in silhouette against the sky. I was pining after a girl who had forgotten all about me back in the winter of 2001 (even though, um, I still think about her occasionally). I used lots of multiple exclaimation marks (like this!!!!!). In short, I was a bit on the strange side. An improvement on the fourteen-year-old living in Caxton four years ago, but still strange.
How can I describe myself now? Well, I have a hell of a lot more experience with writing. I've lost my damn naive views on a lot of things (especially writing). My period of compulsory education has been and gone. I like to think that I'm more mature, have a broader view of the world in general, and have developed a firm set of beliefs, principles, and opinions. I know where I'm going with my future (the immediate future, anyway). Whatever traces of my childhood shyness that remained in 2002 have gone completely. And I've moved on in the love life department, too--none of your business, but I daresay you can speculate ;-).
But there are still traces of that person within me, and it is fascinating to read how last year--2003, the Year Of The Breakthough on all fronts--formed the transitionary phase between the two. You can read some of it in the early archives of this weblog. Actually, I think I can summarise the huge change quite easily: I grew up.
Do you have a "personal" journal of your own? What does it say about you?
There's something special about a weblog, both due to its interactive nature and due to the chronicle it creates as time goes by. However, the very fact that other people can read what you post alters things. It's the old "observation affecting the subject" thing. Some items of news are too personal to post in a weblog, or perhaps not relevant. I know it's up to the author to decide what is and what isn't relevant, but after a while you tend to write for your audience instead of for yourself. If there's an element of feedback, you respond to it. In that aspect, I totally understand Holly Lisle's decision not to include comments in her current blog.
I have a private journal. It's been on the go since July 2002, on and off: sporadic entries, sometimes only one in a few months, covering nearly two and a half years of my life. Although it doesn't have much merit for reminding me when important events happened (it isn't that kind of diary), I think of it as a slice of me. It's concise but honest enough to supply a vivid picture of how I have changed in that period.
Reading it through, I'm astonished at how little similarity there is between who I am now and the person who stares back at me from those earliest pages of the journal. In July 2002, I was a rather odd sixteen-year-old working on the frayed remains of my first novel. I'd just left Cambridgeshire and was settling into my new abode in Suffolk. My GCSE results were still unknown. My knowledge of writing was hopelessly retarded (struggle through Life of a Falcon, and you'll understand). Inexplicably, I was obsessed with cold and overcast weather, with lots of winter trees in silhouette against the sky. I was pining after a girl who had forgotten all about me back in the winter of 2001 (even though, um, I still think about her occasionally). I used lots of multiple exclaimation marks (like this!!!!!). In short, I was a bit on the strange side. An improvement on the fourteen-year-old living in Caxton four years ago, but still strange.
How can I describe myself now? Well, I have a hell of a lot more experience with writing. I've lost my damn naive views on a lot of things (especially writing). My period of compulsory education has been and gone. I like to think that I'm more mature, have a broader view of the world in general, and have developed a firm set of beliefs, principles, and opinions. I know where I'm going with my future (the immediate future, anyway). Whatever traces of my childhood shyness that remained in 2002 have gone completely. And I've moved on in the love life department, too--none of your business, but I daresay you can speculate ;-).
But there are still traces of that person within me, and it is fascinating to read how last year--2003, the Year Of The Breakthough on all fronts--formed the transitionary phase between the two. You can read some of it in the early archives of this weblog. Actually, I think I can summarise the huge change quite easily: I grew up.
Do you have a "personal" journal of your own? What does it say about you?
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