It was bound to happen sooner or later...
Sep. 3rd, 2001 10:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivka...someone I care about discovered my LJ, found himself unflatteringly referenced in this post, and is now quite hurt and upset.
So now I'm not sure where to take this. I'm sorry he's feeling bad. I'm sorry I didn't warn him that I had posted when I was upset with him, but it was a month ago and I'd honestly forgotten.
I'm not sorry that I wrote it. I don't think it was unfair. And it was certainly an honest depiction of my feelings at the time. I'm not willing to promise that I won't write unflattering things about him, or about other people I know, in the future. I have no use for a journal that can only be used for the measured expression of tactful opinions. Since I read his e-mail, I've been saying to myself, Oh, great. Another place where I'm going to have to self-censor. I can't talk candidly about relationship problems in alt.poly, because two of my partners and one partner's wife read everything I post. alt.callahans is pretty much lost to me as a net.home for other reasons, but before it was the same basic problems applied.
I could've made the post friends-only. But then what would I do, not list him as a friend? Would I set access to a specific list of friends, excluding him? Ick. At the time I wrote the original post, I didn't have any friends listed. I wasn't even sure I was going to let anyone know I'd started a Live Journal. Maybe my first impulse was the best one.
He's out for the evening (I should be too, because it's English Country Dance night, but we had to take a houseguest to the airport), and I'm struggling to figure out what to say to him when he returns my call. At the moment, the best I can come up with - for him, for anyone who knows me, is:
"In most of my life I speak very carefully - I spend a lot of time searching for the fairest, most tactful, least emotionally escalating way to express my feelings about a problem. Or I may decide that there isn't a fair, tactful, calm way of saying something, and I might choose to let it go. I do have strong feelings and reactions, though, and sometimes I want to express them without worrying about doing it in the calmest possible way, the way least likely to cause hurt feelings or misinterpretation. This is my place to do that. That means that reading my Live Journal is probably going to be a mixed experience for you. I'm not going to encourage you to read it or stop reading it - but I'm not going to hold back from saying things that might hurt your feelings, either."
I don't know. *sigh* Is that too harsh? How do y'all handle talking about other people who might be - or definitely are - reading your LJ? How much do you self-censor? Do you ever tell someone not to read? How would you want your partners and friends to handle talking about you in a semi-public journal?
So now I'm not sure where to take this. I'm sorry he's feeling bad. I'm sorry I didn't warn him that I had posted when I was upset with him, but it was a month ago and I'd honestly forgotten.
I'm not sorry that I wrote it. I don't think it was unfair. And it was certainly an honest depiction of my feelings at the time. I'm not willing to promise that I won't write unflattering things about him, or about other people I know, in the future. I have no use for a journal that can only be used for the measured expression of tactful opinions. Since I read his e-mail, I've been saying to myself, Oh, great. Another place where I'm going to have to self-censor. I can't talk candidly about relationship problems in alt.poly, because two of my partners and one partner's wife read everything I post. alt.callahans is pretty much lost to me as a net.home for other reasons, but before it was the same basic problems applied.
I could've made the post friends-only. But then what would I do, not list him as a friend? Would I set access to a specific list of friends, excluding him? Ick. At the time I wrote the original post, I didn't have any friends listed. I wasn't even sure I was going to let anyone know I'd started a Live Journal. Maybe my first impulse was the best one.
He's out for the evening (I should be too, because it's English Country Dance night, but we had to take a houseguest to the airport), and I'm struggling to figure out what to say to him when he returns my call. At the moment, the best I can come up with - for him, for anyone who knows me, is:
"In most of my life I speak very carefully - I spend a lot of time searching for the fairest, most tactful, least emotionally escalating way to express my feelings about a problem. Or I may decide that there isn't a fair, tactful, calm way of saying something, and I might choose to let it go. I do have strong feelings and reactions, though, and sometimes I want to express them without worrying about doing it in the calmest possible way, the way least likely to cause hurt feelings or misinterpretation. This is my place to do that. That means that reading my Live Journal is probably going to be a mixed experience for you. I'm not going to encourage you to read it or stop reading it - but I'm not going to hold back from saying things that might hurt your feelings, either."
I don't know. *sigh* Is that too harsh? How do y'all handle talking about other people who might be - or definitely are - reading your LJ? How much do you self-censor? Do you ever tell someone not to read? How would you want your partners and friends to handle talking about you in a semi-public journal?
no subject
Date: 2001-09-03 10:18 pm (UTC)I think these are questions anyone with an LJ has to answer. My mother reads my journal; my sweeties read my journal; random strangers read my journal. It's hard to figure out how honest to be.
The way I've worked it out is to post about things that have me upset while I'm upset, and mark them private. Then once I've vented and I'm feeling calmer, I talk with the people in question, work it out, append the details of the situation's resolution, and make the post public. If it's a very thorny issue, I send the post to anyone else involved for review, to make sure that they don't feel that the post reopens the wounds instead of helping to heal them.
That's the theory, anyway. *) I don't always realize when something might bother someone (I recently referred to being happy about email from a friend; one of his SOs, who reads my journal, asked him if that meant he and I were opening relationship negotiations!). But people are aware that I try, so they cut me some slack, and at the same time, tell me if they think I've crossed the line. I know other people who use a similar system, so it seems to work pretty well. Another person has a "public" journal and a "private" journal, though with filtering added as an option for specific subsets of one's friends group, she may have switched to doing that instead.
I don't tell people not to read, and I don't make friends-only posts at all. Either it's my-eyes-only, or it's public.
As for how people talk about me... I honestly don't care as long as I feel I'm being represented accurately. "Rose did this" isn't a problem for me, as long as I actually did. I don't take journal posts as conversation-starters, though; if someone wants to discuss a problem with me, sie can bring it up with me one-on-one, and similarly, I may post about something to vent but I don't expect other people--even ones I know read my journal--to feel that that puts the ball in their court.
It's hard to balance, but for the most part it works out. I hope you can find a balance that works for you.