I haven’t written in these venues in a while, but this post made me think I should, and here’s why.  When I’m posting anywhere online these days, I’m thinking about audience and who will read it.  And while I think that’s an important thing to consider, the idea of just a clean, unadulterated emotional dump is simply not possible.  Even when sending a text or an email, the thought sometimes crosses my mind about the relative permanence and lack of assurances of privacy.

Back to kids.  What’s lost now without this outlet?  There were things that I could write down in that notebook that I never wanted people seeing, but the process of writing them down was cathartic and, ultimately, emotionally healthy.  Having taught both in the pre- and post-Columbine era, I wonder how many things that we found and had to pursue in the zero-tolerance era were really kids just expressing and not keeping good track of the artifacts. I could also make a choice – active or passive – to share this, as you note in the post.  Active would be sharing it with a friend or family member to bring them in…  and passive would be letting a teacher or a parent find it, because you really wanted to talk about it but didn’t know how.  I suppose a public and cryptic enough post on the likes of Facebook would be the contemporary analog, but even then…  it’s different from your mom finding it on your desk “by accident.”  You leave it out there and you know what’s going to happen…  is that the same now online?  What’s the risk of the signal getting lost in the noise?

My psychologist friend who specializes in social psych, who happens to have been my junior high school note-exchanger, would probably have some insight into this – I will have to float it as a topic of conversation in our next encounter.  Because now this makes me worry – as someone who might possibly be a parent someday, what will be the equivalent for my kids of sitting in their room on the floor, listening to The Smiths, and filling the lines of a composition book?