I love writing. I used to try and keep journals growing up, with varying amounts of success, simply because I like it. I liked the idea of writing something personal about a certain situation, having a certain view, and then reading it at a later time, laughing at my own reaction about something. Or even being like, ‘I can’t believe I felt like that about such and such a person’. As I got older, I realised that a lot of the things I felt were memorable at the time, I actually didn’t remember at all later on. Like, that moment that your first crush ignores you at break time was heartbreaking at 10 years old, but it doesn’t take long for that same moment to have you scratching your head as to why you were so upset. It’s one of the good things about keeping diaries.

I have tried to keep up writing personal journals, but I am getting to the stage where it can take 2/3 years to fill a single book. Which feels a little frustrating for me, because I feel like I am missing out on things. It is like when I discuss this with people around me, they can equate it to not posting on social media. I’ll be honest, I get super annoyed, when people think my wee diary with scribbled drawings is the same as Facebook. My diaries, especially when I was a teenager, were my venting point, that best friend I could tell my secrets to, and noone else would ever. Facebook, is the polar opposite to that. I suppose the idea with social media, is that you can post tidbits of your life to share with others, which is nice, but not everything needs to be shared. For example, glad to read that someone has a new puppy, not too glad to see someone has a new partner on the side. Some things should stay private, right?

This conflict in my mind, between what to share, and what to keep private, is getting harder to negotiate. For years, I used my blogs to vent, my diaries for more personal stuff, and other social media for… well more venting. If I get annoyed with a work colleague, for example, I will rant, but it will go in a small notebook that will never get anywhere near the internet. If it is a bigger issue, like people with bad attitude in the workplace, I may post about it online in a blog post. Mostly, because it allows me the space to explain in a broader sense, because it isn’t about a particular person. However, if I am PISSED, I may rant on Facebook, and honestly, that never ends well. Someone I know will ALWAYS think I am complaining about them, when I’m not. So it creates drama where there should be none.

But because I end up being cautious about what I write, in case I do indirectly offend a friend, I umm and errr over posts, and post nothing. My draft list is getting pretty long at this stage, because I do write a lot, I just decide to sit on the posts for a while, rather than just throwing it out into the wilderness of the internet. It frustrates me, because I never used to be so indecisive about what I post. And now, it is just becoming counter-productive. But that mental barrier holding me back is also stopping me from writing in my diary too. I think it just because there was no distinction of what I was writing, just different categories would go different places, and now I kind of have a block about writing anything.

I hope I am not the only person having such problems.