As I write in my journal, there are times when I am hesitant to say certain things, since people could actually be reading my words. Although why they would do so I just don't know. I'm not going to write any erotic fantasies or anything really purile in any case, since that's just not me. But there are times when I self-edit to spare people's feelings.

Take yesterday as an example. After I was done at the hospital I waited about three hours before I gave up on Dave. Now, when he sees me later and we talk and I find out what he was doing I can see that it wasn't his fault. It was more of a problem of miscommunication between us, so there is no point in being mad at him or trying to make him feel bad. So I just lie a bit and say I got out late and figured he had already stopped by so I should get a taxi.

Now, after having this conversation, do I then write it down if I happen to get to it in that day's journal? I know that Dave reads my journal, for his own depraved reasons, and the same reasoning applies that night as at the time I was talking to him. In this case, I wrote it down. One reason is that I want to know what happened when I read this years from now.

Ten, twenty years from now, when I read over these entries, I'm not going to remember the little things that I didn't write down. There is a lot of context, and reasoning, and feelings that go into making my decisions, and I should explicitly state them as I'm writing. People change, and I know that even a week from now I may feel differently about a subject. So it's good to have my inner thoughts down on some sort of record.

That said, I still don't do that all the time. There are certain lines I won't cross when I'm writing. And frankly, I don't know what those lines are until I get to them. We tend to fool our- selves into thinking that if push came to shove, we would act in these ways or uphold these values. But, you don't really know that until the situation presents itself.

So as I read these journal entries, as any of you readers read these journal entries, keep in mind that there are many things that are left unsaid. I may leave certain assumptions unwritten, I may think that certain things should not be written down, I may not think to put in certain things because I have a different perspective now than I will have a year from now.

This is also a problem in any writing. When you read a book, or watch something on television where someone expresses their current thoughts, it's hard to remember that these are just that, their current thoughts. People change their minds, change their world- view, change their philosophies. It just amazes me when I see on tv where people make value judgements on other people based on something that they wrote or said twenty years ago.

Just like corporations, countries, cultures, and the like are not monolithically monotone, the same can be said of people throughout their lives. People grow and change. Keep this in mind as you read these entries and I contradict myself time and time again. I'm still young, and I'm still proven wrong and change my beliefs from time to time.