Diary - Part Deux

Finally finished reading my diary book late last night; it was boring. Obviously wife had read it all (I never hid it from her), and she added the final piece in it long after I gave up the habbit. Just thinking of the fact that wife had gone through every word in there is a little bit scary, there just are quite some private thoughts that should not have been shared with anybody; and I assume that should be the case with most diary keepers.

Then what is a diary for? If the written record is not to share thoughts, is it only for his or her own consumption at a later time? Or for a memoir? Most people won't have much use of it for sure. Probably keeping a diary just shows the eagerness to be understood and to express oneself, with a conflicting fear of exposing too much of the deepest thoughts; pretty much the same case as when weighing the writing of a love letter, or a confession. In this blog, I do carefully measure what I would like others to see, and what I would rather hide from public eyes. Do I really have much to hide? Probably not. Do people really care much about my little clean or dirty secrets? Maybe. Anyway, the torture of this telling/no-telling has been one of the most powerful driving forces of the finest arts.