Posted by Hannah
on 13/1/2009, 13:36:07, in reply to "Re: for posterity"
Yeah, I know the question seemed odd given your journal's long history (impressive and consistent history, I might add, since you're one of the few I know who doesn't periodically forget how to write and abandon ship for 6 months).
But I see the logic of the 'writing-hampers-life' much more clearly than 'writing enhances life', and I still find myself literally exponentially happier when I live the latter.
It's brain exercise for me. I'm no better at keeping up with brain exercise than I am at keeping up with physical exercise, so the frequency with which I end up thinking about something to write about varies depending on how used to writing I am. As you've probably noticed, I can fall out of the habit quite easily by breaking routine (taking a long road trip, getting busy with music, starting a new relationship, etc) and then, after awhile, my brain stops seeing everything as something to write about and starts hardly seeing things clearly at all.
If I don't write about things, whether I wanted to write about them when I saw them or not, they become fuzzy very quickly. If I haven't written about something, I almost feel like nothing really happened.
So the short answer is, as far as thinking about stuff to write, I'd better think 'ooh, I want to write about this!' fairly often, or else my life just slips away quietly and vaguely and I forget what I've done in the past x days/months/years.
Other peoples' entries-just-for-memory's-sake are often even more interesting to me than the entries they write to an audience. (Your archives are both readable and interesting to me. I checked!) I like to know people when they are least aware that they are being known (I know that makes me sound like a creepy stalker who watches people through bedroom windows, and I guess I am, at least in an internet sense). When I read entries that were clearly written only for the author's sake, I feel like I'm learning about what the author cares to note and remember (in addition to what he or she actually wrote).
The last time I wrote entries specifically aimed at an audience I was in high school, trying to make people feel sorry for me by whining away on my diaryland. (Sad - and ineffective - but true.) Now I'm mostly just musing. So I guess people are always peeping into my bedroom window! Do you usually have an audience in mind when you write? (It sounds like you do from the reasons you describe when you write, but it's possible to ask questions and argue a point without actually asking anyone... or arguing with anyone. I know. I do it all the time.) Do you ever write incomplete memories and hope that someone jumps in to fill in the holes?
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