The eternal public vs. private

[firecat]

I am always waffling about how much to say in my Firecat LiveJournal vs. my private LJ.

OK, so what is the goal here?
*not to embarrass or hurt anybody I'm friends with by saying too much about them.
*not to embarrass me by talking too publicly about stuff I generally consider private.
*to play.
*to find like minded people. But honestly that's pretty far down on the list. There are better ways to find like minded people than LJ.

I'll try writing most of my stuff except really heavy stuff in the Firecat journal for a while. If you are a friend of mine and want the heavy stuff too, drop me an email and I'll tell you the name of the other journal. But please note, there is a chance I will say I don't know you well enough to feel comfortable sharing the other journal with you. If that happens I hope you won't be offended.

Comments

Verbose commentary *)

[rosefox]

There's a lot of stuff I hesitate to post about, here and on other public fora, because I don't want to upset people by either putting up personal things about them, or putting up an unflattering opinion of them even though it may be my genuine opinion. I have become very aware of the need in some of my relationships to put a positive spin on things, and be very diplomatic, and while I know that that's likely to be part of any relationship, no matter how honest and open and accepting it is, it really upsets me sometimes that I can't just say "I did this with X and it sucked because X was doing these things that upset me and other lousy stuff happened" for fear that a) X will be offended, and b) (which I think is more important in some ways) my friends will come away from it thinking that X is a bad person and not want to associate with hir, or be upset with hir on my behalf, or even, if I'm involved with hir, suggest that I break it off because X is obviously not a good match for me. And I don't want X thinking that sie's a bad person or that I'm upset with hir when that's not how I feel, I'm just venting and/or being perfectly upfront even if that involves talking about feelings that I had but have since worked through.

I don't know whether it would be worse to post about a fight with an SO before it had been resolved ("You're trying to turn people against me!"), or after ("You said it was okay and now you're dragging it up again!"). And of course I've gotten into the habit of not posting about fights much or at all for fear of this happening. Bleh. I really hate feeling that I have to mark entries private because of this, because I don't want any of it to be private; the whole idea of the journal, for me, is to tell the world what I think and feel. If I didn't want to share it, I'd keep a paper journal or a PGP'd file or something. Maybe I should do what you're doing and start a separate "This is the heavy stuff, only read it if you really want to know what I'm thinking" journal--the same fears apply, but not as strongly because at least people would have some warning.

Incidentally, I would like to read your "heavy stuff" journal if you feel comfortable letting me in. If not, I completely understand. In some ways I feel like we're getting to know each other well, but in other ways we don't know each other at all; and there will, I hope, be many opportunities to get to know each other better after I move, so I'm certainly not going to take "not now" as "never" (though if you say "never", I won't take it as "not now"). Please email me and let me know, either way.