hottiewithin posted this survey in
1. Do you own a hardcopy journal as well as your LiveJournal?
No.
2. How long have you been writing in each of them? (Or just Livejournal if you don’t have a hardcopy journal.) What was your reason for starting a journal, and has that reason changed over time?
I began my LJ on 5/12/02. I started it on a whim because my partner was enjoying it and it seemed like an interesting experiment.
3. How old are you now? (So I know when you started journaling)
36.
4. What is your main reason for using LiveJournal and/or your hardcopy journal?
I use it to keep in touch with friends, to vent, to work out things that are on my mind, and to save poems and such that I might want to refer to later.
5. Do you have any entries that are private? If so, why are they private (what do you write about? More personal things, etc?)
I don’t have any that are private anymore. I did a very few, but went back and changed them so that my partner can read them. One private entry was a friends-only post that I didn’t feel was quite coherent yet, and the others were largely notes to myself about other things I wanted to write about later.
6. Is there a difference in what you write in your LiveJournal versus your hardcopy journal if you have one?
n/a
7. What is your main motivation for keeping a journal online? What do you hope to achieve?
Right now, I enjoy the interaction. I don’t hope to achieve anything, honestly.
8. Do you have multiple journals for various topics, or do you include all topics you write about in one journal? (For example, there are journals of travel, journals of conscience, journals of personal memoranda, and public journals where you would write about your daily life.)
Nope, just the one.
9. When you are making entries for your Livejournal, do you have a self-conscious awareness of an audience? Does this make you write differently than you would if you didn’t know you had an audience?
Hmmm. Well, I explain things that I wouldn’t if I were only writing in a private journal. And I do use custom filtering at times depending on the sensitivity of what I’m writing about. For instance, our children have LJs, so if I write anything that I don’t wish them to read, I use a filter that only includes the adults on my friends list. That’s about it, though.
10. Do you feel that you censor a lot out of what you would really like to say in your LiveJournal entries because you know someone else is going to read it? It has been said that “anyone who asks about a person’s diary must accept the fact more is concealed than said.” Do you agree with this statement? Why or why not?
I don’t think I self-censor much, other than as noted in the previous question. I’m a fairly open person in most ways.
11. Is the fear that your life will be forgotten if you don’t write things down a part of your motivation for keeping an online and/or hardcopy journal?
No.
12. What is your motivation in reading other people’s LiveJournals?
To keep in touch with friends, and get to know people I find intriguing or inspiring better.
13. Also, where do you think the future of journaling is going? What will be the next “phase”? Do you think video journals will become popular? Any other ideas on this?
Hmm. It’s already taking much of the same path that web pages took earlier—more and more people are starting them, companies are beginning to get involved, there’s more commercialization, etc. We’ll see many people drop off and lose enthusiasm, and some continue to maintain their blogs. We’ll see more commercial blogs, but I can’t honestly imagine why anyone would follow them. And I wouldn’t bother to look at a video journa—I seldom view video clips. I’m more text-oriented.
