Posts I don't

[jack]

I never kept a diary, but now I have a journal anyway there's a few things I do want to put on it anyway, but for no-one to read. Sorts of posts I make private:

* Interesting ones. Eg. I've started a new job for £[money], snogged [person] and [person], and am developing the controversial political view [foo]anism.
* Boring ones. I like to have a record of what I was doing on such a day (eg. to know how long it was since I did something I need to renew), and if I don't have anything to say about it, I'll have a private post saying "Sat. Visited [name] in london. Coffee with [name]. Read newspaper on train. Renewed railcard."
* Ranty ones "Agh! Why is the world against me? Why am I so [negative trait]? I feel really [bad emotion] because I [relatively minor mistake]. Also I REALLY REALLY HATE AUTOMATED MENUS! F**************CK" This releives my feelings without making anyone else read them.
* Aborted posts Something I write something and decide it's not or never will be ready. If I want to work on it I'll copy it to my text file of thoughts to spod, otherwise I may just post it privately.
* Like the previous two, would be a post, but give people a bad impression of me. Eg. "Wooooo! I snogged [nice person], I am teh l333t!" or "Wow! They're STILL paying me two years on![1] And I'm earning £[n]0000![2]" or "I fell off my [conveyance] and hurt my [self]. Boo hoo."

I think I'd be ok with mum reading all of these, but anything important gets c&p'd. Anything really private should go in an encrypted text file, but there never is. If people accidently see something, well, maybe it was meant.

[1] When I make my first million selling free software[3] I'll still in private dance and say "Wooo! I'm successful".

[2] That's an exclamation mark, not a factorial. I read about the chinese sage who was beheaded 2^{for each square on a chess board}-1 times, and have no intention of trying to repeat that here.

[3] Conscience: That's impossible.
Me: Nothing's impossible. You just have to want it really hard.
C: Oo-er.
Me: Shut up.
C: That is, bullshit. However hard you try you can't make the sun rise.
Me: I already did, smart boy. Besides, people actually do sell free software. Writing the code is far from all the cost to actually getting something installed for someone, and there are many successful companies that fill that niche.

[4] I nearly tagged this private because it's *about* private posts. But that would be confusing. Conversely, tagging private has been shown to be a good thing, because if you leave one open people tell you, but if you just say "Mon. Coffee. Veizla emails. Pizza. Simon Sorcerer," people think you're being boring and terse :)

Comments

[angelofthenorth.livejournal.com]

*giggles*
*wonders how often she's shown up in private posts*
I do something similar with really interesting things - I have a private post on [something in Greek about the nature of the anti-christ] that I'm working on.
I don't think any of 'those' classes of posts would make anyone think badly of you. Differently of you, perhaps

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

There weren't any private posts about you (though you showed up on a list of people). There was one locked to only my very very closest friends, copied here "A date with Angel, the full details". Check email :)

Uh, are the quotes on "those" supposed to be emphasis or distancing? Do you mean the greek antichrist, or one of the dodgier sort of comments mentioned in my post?

[angelofthenorth.livejournal.com]

the ones that you mentioned - I was emphasising those, as opposed to others that could make me think ill of you (or anyone else for that matter)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh good. Sorry, I just had that horrible "Oh my god! I dated a greengrocer" moment -- we did everything in such an odd order I really would have wanted to know that first, but was not to be. Sorry, on resizing my browser I see the "interesting things" sentence and the "those" sentence were on separate lines, they just looked like they ran on so I thought the second was about the first.

I don't think any of 'those' classes of posts would make anyone think badly of you. Differently of you, perhaps

I don't know. I don't mean, think I'm a bad person (I didn't give any of those as examples), but if you could see everything I was amazed I'd done you'd think I was twelve... :)

[angelofthenorth.livejournal.com]

It's a good job I try to limit my enthusiasm, or you'd think I was one of my brownies...

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I do sometimes post snippets of philosophy or fiction, but those always turn out to be something I'd like to make publishable and then post for real, so normally go into my text file of partial spods. So a few more than what's public, but not really of any deeper insight.

There's some nice turns of phrase lost forever behind a friendslock, so I will reproduce for everyone "[1] An imperial shitload is the standard measure of snoggage, especially gay snoggage, though scientists tend to prefer metric shitloads, or 'decasnogs'," from the post about you, though this specific bit wasn't about you.

[angelofthenorth.livejournal.com]

*laughs*

[miss-next.livejournal.com]

It is definitely not a good idea to get yourself beheaded on LJ, no. Not even once. :-)

[mair_in_grenderich]

because I stay logged in as flurble, but post as mair_aw, if I make private posts they don't show up on /my/ flist either. sometimes I write things that I sort of want to post, but decide I don't, quite, because they say things about people that I don't want to make public, or they're too gloomy, or they say things about me that I don't really want to tell the world, and sometimes I lock those

sometimes - quite often - I write a post and decide not to bother posting it for whatever reason and it stays as a draft in logjam. I think that's mostly more common than private postings. either because there was something I wanted to blog about but couldn't think of anything I really wanted to say when it came to it, or because I just wanted to blog but had nothing to blog about, either way ending up with some dull wibbly text...

and periodically i back up LJ to lj.flurble and let all the private posts show up there too.

if I want to write stuff that I don't want anyone to read, I use paper or text file.

so, why do you lock the *interesting* ones? :-)

so, why do you lock the *interesting* ones? :-)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

See example 1. I don't lock *everything* interesting (I hope), but some things are just too hot to be public :)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I've got quite good at not having half written posts. There's only a couple I've abandoned, and I hope people think what I've posted isn't too wibbly :)

I always try to rewrite angst as an amusing greenenders sketch :)

[sunflowerinrain.livejournal.com]

Once upon a time the livejournal database threw a wossname and a lot of locked posts became visible; hence I don't put anything really private in here.

However, even if it happened again, your private posts don't sound like a potential for public anguish :)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Well, a few might be embarassing. And of course, if I tag them, people could search for them more easily than other people's. But I think it's not big a risk.