for several reasons, but the one most relevant here being that it had never occurred to me that I was sending out my thoughts and reflections to be validated by someone else. I've kept a journal for years and years. When I was little I had a "diary" with the lock and key and everything. I don't have any of those anymore, but I do have journals going back about 15 years, although they have been purged considerably. I never really thought that I was writing to anyone except myself in those spaces - certainly I never intended for others to see my journals and when once that happened, it stopped me from writing openly for myself for years. Yet I do see that writing in any medium almost has to presuppose some "other," even if the other is just another part of me. That's a whole "other" conversation...

I'm intrigued about the notion of posting thoughts to the public space of the blogosphere. It seems to me to take a bit of arrogance wo assume that anything I would have to say would be of interest to anyone else in the world, and to put those thoughts in a public medium such as a weblog seems to declare tham as important. I never think I have that much of interest to say in a general environment. Who would care what I thought about anything?

So then van Dijck writes about rewriting log entries, with a corresponding reference to Anne Frank's interest in rewriting her diary. This reminded me of Louise Weatherbee Phelps's article in Composition in Four Keys about rewriting her daybook entires and rewriting thoughts about writing again and again. I see the value of that, but I wonder about doing it in a public space. Maybe I'm not ready to have my thoughts and development be that transparent. Maybe I feel the separation from thought to keyboard that van Dijck wrote about with the coming of the typewriter.

I like my pens, and papers. I have brand new spiral bound notebooks in varying sizes that have cool sheer plastic covers, colorful top inside covers, and paper that is either colored (pastel) or contains an embedded colorful background. I use a wide variety of pens, as anyone who's ever been in a class with me knows (and that doesn't include the round of 100 gel pens I recently acquired and keep at home, nor does it include my extensive crayon collection, nor my fountain pens.....). I have handmade paper, as assortment of note cards, narrow lined tablets, wide lined tablets and plain notebook paper. I guess to some degree, those items are part of my signature.

For all those tools, you would assume I have a lot to say to a great many people. I don't. And that's a paradox to me, because the "easier" is becomes with technology to produce, archive and retrieve text, the more difficult I find it to write.