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Saturday, March 27, 1999: Psychic forces
Last night after I finished the journal entry and sent out the notification message,
I went in and changed one of the graphics on the Natterwick postcard page, then thought I might mess around in Bryce for awhile. I
spent about ten minutes at it before I was yawning uncontrollably. I shut the computer down and went upstairs to the office, where Bob was
playing his new game. I told him I was going to bed, and he said, "But it's only 9:15!" I told him I knew that, but I was sleepy, and
thought I might as well give in. I really figured that I'd wake up in the middle of the night and end up getting up, but I slept until
4:15, when he finally came to bed. It seems like we talked for awhile then, but I can't remember specifics.
After that, I slept until 8:00. Almost eleven hours. Amazing.
I remember living alone in a little studio apartment on The Plaza. I would sleep the clock around. It's only recently that I've
started staying up late; I've always gone to bed around 10:00. On Saturdays I would wake up and go back to sleep several
times. I had no real responsibilities or urgent errands. I'd sleep exactly as long as I wanted. These recent weekend nights when I've
napped, stayed up late, slept, gotten up early, have been sort of reminiscent of that time. It feels sort of like I'm getting away
with something, sort of rebellious. Kind of nice.
My philosophy about what I write here:
This journal isn't a secret. It's a big part of my life, a big part of my identity. I'm proud of it, and everyone I know knows about
it. This site's address, along with my real name and where I live, has been published in magazines and books and newspapers. Bob tells
people about it in casual conversation, my sisters and brother mention it to their friends, my friends tell their friends about it, the
people I work with know about it . . .
and so on and so on. That's exactly the way I want it. I want to be able to tell people about it, and I want to be proud of it.
That's why, when I might otherwise write something here which, while maybe not a secret, could certainly be considered private
by the person involved, I stop and think. How would someone feel if a friend said to them, "Oh, I'm sorry to hear about what happened
to you," only to find out that this person had read about it in my journal? It's one thing, I think, to have news spread by word of mouth
among friends, sort of another to find it published somewhere, even if it is on the web, a somewhat nebulous and transitory
publishing venue.
I was reading an article the other day in an online publication, and the columnist was talking about people writing in and complaining
that links published in articles over a year ago no longer worked. He said that they had considered this problem, and decided that
once a column was published online, it would not be changed. If it had mistakes in it, they could be corrected in the next week's
article. He said that if they continually went back and made corrections and updates to old material, then the integrity of their
archives could not be trusted, i.e., if someone was reading a "November 1997" article, it would no longer be what was actually
published in November of 1997, but a continually updated article with no historical value.
I've always subscribed to that theory, also. When I first started writing this journal, I put in a lot of links. I don't do that so much
anymore--I only link to things that I think are extraordinary, and hopefully, things of lasting value. That's certainly not always
going to be the case, and there will be broken links throughout this site. That's just the way it is. I made a decision early on that
what I published on a certain day would stay that way for as long as this site is online. That's not to say that the archives will
always be there, from the beginning of time up until now, but if you read an old entry, it's there exactly as it was when I wrote
it originally, not continually updated and edited to suit my changing opinions.
Some of those old entries are a little bit embarrassing to me now, and I don't read them. The point is, though, that they're only
embarrassing because of less polished writing skills, or choice of banal subject matter, not because of secrets revealed.
It's always possible to tell an amusing story at someone else's expense, or recount an incident that happened to explain why I'm
feeling a certain way. But if that incident involved something that I don't feel belongs here, i.e., it involves someone other than me
and a subject matter that could be considered private or personal, I won't put it in here. That's just the way it is, and the way
it's going to continue to be. That's the only way that I would ever consider continuing this journal. I would never want anyone
to be afraid to tell me something for fear it would end up here. I don't think that's right.
Certainly, everything a writer experiences has the potential to turn into "material," and I guess that's the risk that the people I
know take. But I believe that I am ethical and trustworthy, and would never betray a confidence for the sake of
something to write about. And even things that aren't confidences--there are many times that I start to write about something,
then re-think and decide that perhaps it doesn't belong in here. The company I work for isn't a secret, and neither is who I am. I don't
want to have to worry about things coming back to me sometime in the future.
I don't want to worry about giving people pseudonyms. If I can't write about something in a straightforward manner, then my
opinion is that it doesn't belong here. If Bob objected to being mentioned here, then I would stop mentioning him. If I ever
felt that he was uncomfortable about the way I write about him, I would stop. I believe that I'm always pretty careful to
talk about our life by referring to concrete things that happen, and by talking about things in the way that they affect me.
He did send an email to me yesterday after having read the entry where I said that describing him as "long suffering" was a bit
much. He wrote something like, "I do suffer. My hobbies keep me sane and clear-headed. Someone in this family has to be, since
both you and Pyewacket are crazy." And then he said something about the psychic forces swirling around us . . .
Apparently my "fix" for the font size problem
wasn't as "fixed" as I thought. I'm sitting here with four browsers open--Netscape 2, 3 and 4, and IE 4. They all handle tags differently;
some of them handle stylesheets and some of them don't. The dynamic font sizing that I talked about last night is apparently only
in Netscape 4. I couldn't find any font size controls in earlier versions of Netscape. I've added font tags back in, so hopefully that will
solve the problem.
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