I'm hitting Online Journalist Crisis #1: Dealing with people you know in Real Life.

This is coming much earlier than I'd anticipated. I figured I'd spend until the start of February just getting my bearings, and then I'd gradually start easing into my personal life. This would enable me to see just how far I was comfortable going, at which point I could draw my line in the sand and live within it happily ever after. At least in theory.

Needless to say, I did not expect my grandmother to die in the first week of the thing, leading me to write an embarrassingly personal (and not all that well-written) piece shortly thereafter. I did keep it vague on the details involving anybody else -- which was intentional -- but it still went pretty far, too fast.

I then, for whatever reason -- I've given up trying to understand the way my mind works sometimes [1] -- printed out a copy of the January 24th entry for myself, nicely reformatted to fit on a page in three columns, with no direct evidence that this was anything but a page from my personal, private diary. And, yes, I suppose I knew that I was going to show it to somebody else, and that it would be utterly stupid to do so.

I did, of course. My aunt. Who proceeded to show it to my grandfather and my uncle, and, well, I think the entire family tree is going to get their hands on the thing before long.

Sigh. This was not what I'd had in mind when I wrote the thing. I would have done things rather differently if I'd thought anybody in the family was going to see it, if I'd written it at all, which I wouldn't have. I certainly would have yanked out the last few paragraphs, at the least, opting instead for an oratorical flourish focusing on my grandmother, rather than focusing on my own feelings, which are none of their business, really.

My own fault on that count; if I didn't want anybody to see it, I shouldn't have showed it to anybody in the family in the first place. But therein lies the problem, and it's one I didn't anticipate at all: I always show off my writings. I carry 'em around with me,[2] I force them on virtual strangers, I stand by attentively watching people's reactions as they read through the pages. How did I expect to write pages of material every day and not want to show it off?

Well. There's some precedent there. I have written things that members of my family don't know about. There is, for instance, what is probably the best essay I've ever written, "Effing the Ineffable," which is a sociolinguistic look at a certain particular four-letter word. It won a few prizes in my college's annual writing contest. My family knows that I won, but doesn't know why. Similarly, a couple of my columns in the college paper have gotten just a bit racier than I'd be comfortable showing around at home.

The difference, of course, is that in those cases, I had other people to show 'em to. Enough people on campus are interested in my stuff that I have no real need to pass it on to anybody dangerous. And even there, I've had a bit of trouble holding back. A couple of my siblings do know what subject matter I've written on, although they haven't seen the actual essays. Stupid? Perhaps.

I'm a writer. I need to communicate. Even when it's not a good idea to do so.

Meanwhile, back at the journal, my avowed game plan is not to let anybody I know in Real Life know about this. I've already made two exceptions, but one's out of state, and the other just graduated, so I'm not going to see them much, if at all, anytime soon. But the temptation to pass the URL to everyone in sight is there. I'm having to actively resist it. 'Cause otherwise, I'm gonna have to tear down most of I've written so far, including this, and start from scratch with an utterly different focus, and I don't want to do that, because it defeats my purposes in starting this thing in the first place.

I'd thought the danger was outside discovery. Ha. We have met the enemy, and he is us.

Throughout all of this, I was protesting that this was just a page from my diary, and that I'd never meant for anybody to see the thing in the first place.

Ponder that statement for a bit.

While you ponder that, I'll mention in passing that I've patched up the entry in question to remove the two details alluded to above.

Now. Honesty is important to me. And here I am insisting that this was something I hadn't intended to show anybody. And it was true, after a fashion. It rung true to me. Well, sort of.

Certainly, at this point, I think I have about six readers; maybe ten, if I'm lucky, but I doubt that. There are a few people I've roped in personally, and Mary Anne and Elaine both mentioned me in their journals. That, and a link from my name on the Mouthorgan discussion boards, is about it. Okay, Elaine's endorsement was such that I'll never be able to live up to it, but, still. I've only been here a few days. So it doesn't really feel like I have much of an audience. Aside from a few particular people, and they're the ones I'd probably be pestering now via private e-mail anyway; I've sort of been looking at these entries as filling that purpose. Private e-mail isn't, like, publication.

Still, how can I say that I didn't mean for anybody to see it? What are you, chopped liver?

Perhaps. Online journals are a peculiar thing. I certainly wouldn't say that I've "published" anything I'm typing here. Nothing on this site is in finished form. At best, these are jottings of thoughts I've had, which may make it to the first draft stage someday. But it's no more than raw material. So, in that sense, I can honestly say that I didn't intend for anybody to see anything here as a finished work.

None of you, I trust, are holding this to the same standards you'd hold published material. All of you, I trust, understand that everything here is completely subjective, and that I'm going to be withholding important details at times. Most of the traditional standards for writings simply don't apply here; it's a different medium. I'd describe it as a hybrid between an e-mail to the readers, and the readers sneaking a peek at my diary. Either way, it's not the same as a "real" essay, which is what my relatives meant when they wanted to know if I intended to publish the thing. I don't think they would -- or could -- mind if I shared it with a few friends, which, in my mind, is what this little project amounts to.

That might not be the case if readership of this site takes off, though. Hmmm.

But then, they've never seen my diary. I guess they're taking me at my word, and assuming that either I felt a need to recapitulate the whole story from the top, or that I'm constantly practicing my writing in general, and that that was a part of that. As all of that is true, in fact, I guess it had enough verisimlitude to get by.

Perhaps.