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Comment by complianceowl | Hacker News Reader

Has anyone here ever refrained from being too honest in your journaling, out of fear someone read it some day?

It's prevented me from keeping one at all. Years ago, my mother broke into my then 12-year-old sister's diary for no better reason than to find out what was going on when she wasn't home, which was often. I later wrote some really shitty teen-angst poetry and buried it under a stack of books and papers in a corner of my bedroom closet, and she found that. Decades later, I still feel like I can't write something emotionally honest because it will be exposed and used against me somehow.

Definitely. Though less and less as time goes on. Journalling, as with any art form, is part of a process of pealing off layers of yourself until only your truth remains.

Each time you journal you'll reveal a little bit more, and when you accept the words you write about yourself, you won't mind as much if others don't accept them.

I have two sections in my digital notebook that are off limits, encrypted and password protected (with passwords I never share and 2FA) that contain "Dark Thoughts" and "Bad Thoughts About People." Dark Thoughts section is where I journal about some internalized toxic negativity, usually fabricated by some mild background depression, running through my brain. Dark Thoughts section lets me compartmentalize and objectively examine those thoughts. Bad Thoughts About People are where I put all those notes I might think about a person in my life that you don't necessarily want to voice, but you need to get the thought out of your head so you aren't dwelling on it.

Is your journal on your laptop? What if you are asked to decrypt at the airport?

I can happily decrypt the laptop the airport. Doesn't mean all the data in the laptop is decrypted. It's way too much data for a non-forensic team to sift through without concerted effort. My house has multiple doors with multiple locks. Just because you made it past the front gate ("please unlock your laptop") doesn't mean you got in to the fire safe inside the locked office inside the locked house. And so you opened the very obvious fire safe where we keep a little cash and some spare keeys and you looked inside. Congratulations, there's four other safes in the house that aren't in plain sight with different combinations, not including all the other stuff that is locked up securely. Just because I entered in an easily recalled and easily typed password that gives you access to 4TB of data, it doesn't mean you can easily access all of that 4TB with the same set of keys. It'd take you "quite some time" to fish through to even find the encrypted data.

I would be more upset if they confiscated the physical hardware for analysis than the encrypted data that is on it.

No, since I strive to journal on a factual based tone. Barely do I jot down any emotions or opinions about people.

Phrasing a situation down into facts helps to change perspective away from the ego pov and to dissolve any anger or other negative emotions.

Emotions _are_ facts.

By not reporting your emotions around a subject, you're omitting the facts of the situation.

I'm not a very outwardly emotional person, which sometimes causes tension in my social life. I've been trying recently to regard my emotions more as a more primitive version of thinking, rather than some other kind-of-thing. They're automatic thoughts coming from my brain that manifest as "feeling" something rather than something I can articulate into facts. It's been somewhat helpful in trying to accept my emotions rather than hide or obscure them.

I dislike the current culture that we have that demonizes emotions. The stance that being emotionless is superior to having emotions.

Emotions, like everything else, can either both drag people down....or be used to amplify their strengths. The problem is that society seems to only consider the former and disregard the latter.

"Emotions _are_ facts."

No, they are not. They are your emotions. Not saying that they are less real or that they should be dismissed, but a threat is a fact, your fear is your emotional reaction to it. There is a difference.

The difference is that you have control over your thoughts, reactions and emotions. If you do not differentiate between the outside world of facts and the inside world of thoughts and emotions, you mush them together into a mess.

I can learn to master my emotions and for example dissolve my fear. That will not remove the threat. If I learn to assess the threat regardless of my emotional reaction to it, I get a better grasp on the severity of the threat and can react accordingly.

That is not to say that emotions should be ignored. I'd recommend against that. Listen to yourself. If you feel the desire to journal them, by all means, do it. But for journaling _I_ prefer to differentiate and try to keep my emotions out of the narrative. You are free to do otherwise.

The idea of journaling was filling the need to talk to someone about something, but another person could never be trusted. Anne Frank would be mortified that people read her most private thoughts and fantasies.

It's rooted in psychological well being, much like therapy. It's why I was most offended by the judge mocking Ross Ulbricht for committing his private observations, including criminal ones, to his diary. Modern life asks that we be strangers, even unto ourselves, understood only by our digital merchants.

I believe most versions of Anne Frank's diaries, at least those versions that appear in school curricula, are edited and censored in places. That is fair, because the historic value of the overall ideas shared doesn't justify violating a deceased person's privacy 100%.

I mean, I question the value of keeping track of what porn you looked at that day, but as years go by the level of damns given about what other people think about you and your opinions goes down.

I also think the level of security available these days is far superior to what you had growing up (e.g. the 50c padlock your sister could pick with a goddamn bobby pin), so the odds your immediate family is going to find out things you'd rather they not know has gone down a bit.

That is why all of my personal files are encrypted. When I die, they die with me.

Yes, although less so with age.

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