My Dear Diary Credo.

Every so often I like to cruise the Atomic Forums. They aren’t as active as I’d wish for, but they still provide a chance to interact with diarists outside of the comments section, without the formality of e-mail or the real-time imposition of instant messengering.

I checked in this morning, and came across a question by Butterfly1980 asking if Steve and Matt ever had any intentions of deleting long dead diaries so that others could claim names no longer used. This is Steve’s response (to see the entire thread, go to Usernames):

We never intend to delete accounts that have entries in them unless the author requests. The original intention of DD (weirdly perhaps) was not to provide a site where everyone could write their diaries, but to provide a site where people could (in 20 years time for example) come and read history through the eyes of real people, not politicians and pressmen. The difference is subtle, and of course one requires the other, but that’s why we don’t delete inactive accounts – they are just as valuable as active ones.

That made me stop and think a moment. If Dear Diary’s Administrators’ dreams come true, then this diary has the potential to be sitting here decades from now, accumulating cyber-dust and awaiting readers who want to peek in on the trials and tribulations of life at the turn of the century.

How would I want these nameless strangers from the future to view me? If these words are indeed destined to see the light of day in some tomorrow that I no longer inhabit, will the reader see a whiney, never satisfied woman who has nothing better to do than bitch about dirty dishes? Will the self-centeredness of my hurts, my pains, my disappointments be the strongest message to come out of these oft-times disjointed ramblings? The love I hold for The Professor, the admiration and esteem that I have for my friends, the sheer joy that Clueless, ACfH and WP give me: Will any sense of that come through from these virtual pages? Have I written the words necessary to tell someone not yet born that, different as our times are, we share the wonderful commonality of being human? I don’t know, but I suspect that if I keep these questions in mind, then not only will my journaling skills improve, but my life may improve as well.

My journaling skills can only do so much, though. The Reader brings his or her own prejudices to the text. That is true today, and will be true for as long as any written word exists. We cannot control people who read a hidden agenda in our words that does not exist there. We cannot control readers who are inspired to twist the meanings of our words as written, enforcing their own perceptions and misperceptions upon another’s story. As Writers, we only control that which spills from our fingertips. Once it has left our minds and our hands, the writing takes on a life of its own, and will speak only as well as others listen.