Dear new diary

Written as suggested by Sunday Scribblings:

The prompt for this week is: Dear Diary.
Shhhhhhh... are your secrets deep and dark or wistful and whimsical? Do you have a character that you need to flush out by writing some diary entries? Is there something your twelve-year-old self wants to say? Do you have a silly secret crush? What needs to be written in a beautiful book and locked with a tiny gold key?

Here goes...

Dear new diary,

I’m starting you to turn a new leaf, swearing to be radically honest about the person to be recorded here. For a few minutes being.

First off, what are my motivations?

1. I want to be read, that’s why I’m participating in a blog thread. So I’m like a spider in a way, spinning a web to trap potential readers. Except that the overall web has been woven before. I’m in a chain of webs, so to speak.

2. Why not be radically honest once in a while? Even though I’ve had my share of radically honest attacks and have always come out radically honestly different, this has not worn off all my inclination to radical honesty. I’ve noticed that radical honesty – my own or others’ – is not necessarily free from strings. There might be vanity involved – Look how radically honest I can be! – or sickness with one’s own perpetual lies to cushion up one’s existence. Can we really stand the truth about ourselves? Can we admit to being greedy, stingy, stupid, envious, evil, hopeless, hopeful, befuddled, spaced out, sick, perverse, all that? Not that we are all that all the time, of course. But some of the time or the majority of the time everyone is a bit of this, a bit of that. Even though some of it might be well-hidden under so-called good intentions.

3. After this theoretical preamble on virtue and vice, let me delve into today.

• I’ve already managed to be tired and not listen to some of the things my beloved held forth about. That’s why I can’t even remember the topic of her holding forth.
• I’ve already ruminated about a friend – how strenuous she can be, how hectic, how difficult in her relations with others (including me). Although I tend to go to great length with her in trying to smooth things over. To explain her misconceptions benevolently.
• I’ve already suffered from self-doubt, thinking that, if closely examined, people will quickly find out that I’m not all that wonderful. (Have I given you any reason to believe I’m wonderful so far? No, I don’t think so.)
• I just thought about wordiness. I’m usually a man of few words. I can put things in a nutshell, but often others want more effusion than a nutshell. They want at least a big, big coconut – stuffed and overflowing. I’ve been accused of being simplistic because I’m usually happy with simplified interpretations of things. Makes life so much simpler sometimes.
• I’ve already white-lied. It’s that cushioning I mentioned before. Cushioning things up for others, but also for oneself.
• Worry: the truth will inevitably shine through!
• I had too much for lunch. Not only that, I ate two more chocolate-covered rice cakes shortly after lunch.
• Now I’ll have to go get coffee.
• More reason to worry: I am doing things I am not getting paid to do.

Dear new diary, that’s it for now, some time in August of 2007, in the middle of the week. I can look out from underneath the shutters and see dense white clouds moving along the stark contrast of a uniformly sprayed sky. Just thought you needed to know that for environmental completeness.

PS: I'm fighting with some Blogspot formating issues. Sometimes Blogspot does something different every time you save the same post.