Journals and Blogging: The Private and the Public

Posted by Katrien Vander Straeten Jul 29, 2006

I have been keeping a journal for over twenty years now. Often I keep more than one, and on "good days" I write in it several times a day. So I fill up those precious Moleskines pretty fast.

At one point in time I kept a pretty ambitious journal online: a blog. It was ambitious in that every day I wrote an entry that was thought-through as well as rewritten several times. I also added eye-candy: little comic strips I drew myself, photographs, illustrations. It was meant primarily for family and friends, but that is still very "public" compared to the illegible scribbles in my Moleskine.

After a while, though, I became more conscious of a problem. For one, too much "public awareness" was creeping into my journal, making it sound artificial and robbing it of its confidentiality. And so it lost its function, and I rarely ever wrote in it anymore. On the other side, as I became more aware of a wider audience for my blog, I struggled to find a "public voice" for an enterprise that was still intended as a personal endeavor.

On short, I lost the delicate balance between the private and the public. As soon as I realized what was at stake, I stopped the blog and returned to the journal, which has a lot more value to me.

Now I can't possibly be the only one with that problem! The Pew Internet Report on Bloggers (just out) reports the following:

Does it also strike you as paradoxical and potentially problematic that blogs, which are accessible to any Tom, Dick and Harry out there, could still be regarded as "private" or "personal" by their authors?

I've resolved to investigate this issue further. I will be keeping a close eye on our poll (click that button!), interview people who keep a journal and/or blog, and study the journaling/blogging phenomenon.

If there's something you want to share with me on this issue, please email me.