So I was just chewed out by a certain individual I recently launched a sort of diatribe against and, this being my little corner of egotistical rants, I feel the need to go into an egotistical rant about it.

Allow me to repeat that: This is my little corner of egotistical rants. My corner. Mineminemineminemine. Etcetera. Point is, I didn't start an online diary so I could write what people want me to write. I didn't start one so I could express my fiery opinions on world affairs, bemoan the decadence of modern politics, post fiction, or offer spiffy templates to the masses. Alas, I tend to express my opinions on world affairs in other circles, politics are bemoaned enough as it is, my fic diary remains emphatically and neurotically locked and bolted, and I can't pull together a decent template to save my life. Besides which, there are plenty of other places where all of the above can be found, none of which I could ever hope to equal.

No, mediocre thing that I am, I hopped into Diaryland with every intention of blathering about the petty, unimportant trivialities that pervade my own petty and unimportant life. Which I did, with the mindless happiness of a faltering mortal who's managed to find a satisfactory outlet. Several months later, I became acquainted with a girl who happened to keep a journal on LJ. She gave me the URL and, out of respect and curiosity as to the concept of having Someone I Really Knew reading my diary, I gave her mine. At first, I worried about self-censorship and the like: what if I ended up altering my entire writing style for fear of what conclusions this girl (an uninhibited journalist who sometimes goes by the nickname Mao) might draw from the entries? What if she told other people about my diary? What if she pegged me as a likely candidate for the lunatic asylum and thoughtfully ordered a straitjacket?

And so on. I didn't know what to expect, so I expected the worst.

None of the above occurred and my paranoia slowly alleviated. I continued writing as usual, and when Mao began converting other dramamates to LJ, I was considerably less wary of giving my diary's URL to a couple of them. More time went by, I kept wailing online about my life, or lack thereof, and no white-coated men ever showed up at my door. I began to suspect that the three People I Really Knew weren't even perusing my moans and groans anymore, at least not often. So I didn't think much of it when I directed another dramamate to the diary, and I continued writing in the same angsty vein.

I write about myself a lot. Its one of the few subjects I'm an authority on. I whine a lot, too. Its one of the few things I do well. Granted, my life doesn't provide me with very many interesting things on which I'm able to exploit this talent, but I make due with the small, mundane irritations all the same.

Maybe by the fourth time I'd given the URL out I'd grown careless. Maybe I assumed that, because I'd never censored anything (with the exception of people's names and various events I thought it prudent never to mention at all), there was no longer any reason to suspect anyone might prefer I did. At any rate, when the fourth dramamate provided me with an opportunity to plunge into an egotistical rant, I did so without a second thought (see previous entry, assuming you're into the whole masochism thing).

As of now, there are four dramamates to whom I have imparted the whereabouts of good ol' Appoggiatura; a couple of them also know about Inverted Ivy. I doubt there will be more. The fourth one, quite recently, expressed some indignation in relevence to the aforementioned rant ("...and yes, thank you for putting me out there on your diary. It was much appreciated. I never cursed up such a storm in my back yard before in my life :-)" to slap down an excerpt from the ensuing conversation).

At that point, I regressed to my original worries. Maybe I should start censoring, if my normal ramblings were starting to agitate the readers... It seemed like the sensible thing to do, although I'd previously determined that their opinions, even those of the People I Really Knew, should have little or no bearing on such things.

I generally don't consider myself offensive; in most cases, I'll keep my mouth shut rather than run the risk of letting out anything controversial. I'm another maudlin-mad adolescent, give or take (the latter, most likely) a few vertabrae. End of story.

And I don't consider my most recent angst-fest particularly offensive either. In the first place, the subject of it had the ever-present option of simply not reading it. In the second place, he had no reason whatsoever to believe that I posted it in an effort to deliberately humiliate him (though, looking back, its probable he was attacked by that dear feeling known as paranoia). Besides which, the other three dramamates, whether they read it or not, certainly wouldn't have gained any information previously unknown to any of them, and the fourth dramamate isn’t dense enough to believe otherwise. And in the third place, I was fairly merciful. I could have gone into deeper detail, dived off the precipice and into more descriptive terms. I could have mentioned that the individual in question is five foot five, fifteen years of age, attends last year’s supposed top school in the nation, is a fantastic artist, currently wishes he had more hair, collects records, enjoys creative writing, frequents the Java House, informed me that cratedigging has nothing to do with spelunking or construction work, occasionally plays the minority card, is fond of hats, habitually reticent, and an aspiring graphic novelist who has a lamentable tendency to make art imitate life, and who is known by the versatile name Sebastian.

But no. I didn't say a thing about any of that; to the contrary, I made references to a rather anonymous shade by the equally ambiguous pseudonym Reyu (I still can't remember how I managed to get "Reyu" out of "Sebastian," but that's beside the point).

But the fact of the matter is that this is my bloody diary and I’ll do what I want with it, so there, etc. This place’s main function is to serve as a personal whine-zone, and if I base my entries on what readers do or don’t want to see, I’ll have precious little left.

This has grown entirely too long and I should be in bed. And now I will proceed to stick this mess in the diary with the rest of its kind, and hurriedly bang out another entry, just because.

Let’s end things with a random link, shall we? Right.

Adieu.