June 17, 1997
10:12AM EST

I've been making my usual rounds to Maggy's World, and Other Side, Backstory and Bullshit, olio and a few of the other daily sites that I check up on as well as a brief tour through the other sites at often.

Michael said a few things in the past few days (June 14-17) that really got to me. Especially about work and how it kind of overtakes you. Gage's comments about her diary only being a slice of her life re-inforced that concept in my mind and actually allayed some fears that I was putting too much out there for scrutiny, though what I write here is by no means as open, or explicit as some of the other diaries I have read online.

However it got me thinking about why we, (meaning online diarists) do this. Some other folks, who have been keeping an online diary much longer than I have, seem to have been through periods where they feel they can't do it anymore, that they've put too much of themselves up there and gotten burned. Or they've burnt out and feel they don't have the strength to do it anymore, and are concerned because it is no longer enjoyable to them.

So I keep thinking to myself, what is it that makes it fun? For me I guess, most of it is design. And the chance to go on and on about whatever I happen to have on the brain without interruption. A recent thread in mindspace covered this pretty well: on the Web you cannot be silenced. Even if a person clicks away, they've probably already read part of what you've written. You will be heard. You may or may not like your audience, but your words aren't just echoing up from some void, they're being absorbed into countless minds and turned over and in the best of worlds, causing a new thought or idea to spring forth.

I've left some of my postings with open-ended questions at the end in the hopes of stirring a little bit of dialogue. It doesn't have to be deep, or high-brow, but the web is meant as a communication device, so why not leave the opportunity open? Maggy did this very well by creating mindspace. Checking mindspace has become one of my most looked-forward-to moments of the working day because there's usually something thought-provoking or at least interesting up there. All she did was provide a space and a general atmosphere and in my opinion that simple idea has flourished.

Anyway, back to the why question. So, do we write for the masses in hopes of being less alone? I don't know, it seems that most of the diaries I have read are from people who have very full lives. You can find plenty of lonely and desperate, weird and nifty people in chat rooms on AOL, in MUDs, MUSHes and other such forums, but diarists seem to have other bones to pick and other goals in mind. Most just seem to need a place to VENT, where they can say all the things they can't really say to people around them, but need to get out in the open anyway.

That's sort of what I'm doing. So many things run through my mind every day, it kind of seemed a shame to lose them all, so I started writing some of it down. Then I started pulling some things out of the cobwebby corners of my mind and heart to dust them off and decide whether to junk 'em or not.

Like any "Real" diary, these ramblings help to put life into perspective.

Maybe that's all any of us are looking for: just a little bit of perspective.

What do you think?