Each time you write something to post on social media, think, “Actually, should this go on my blog?”. 1

Each time you write something to post on your blog, think, “Actually, should this go in my journal/diary?”

Each time you write something to save in your journal, think, “Actually, does this need to be written down at all?”

Sometimes the right thing to do is to sit and feel what you’re feeling, think what you’re thinking, and then let those feelings and thoughts dissipate.

Brought to you by a tweet draft I pasted into MarsEdit to make a blog post that I then pasted into Day One instead.

  1. Syndication from your own site that allows for title-less posts is magic for this question, because then the answer is almost always, “Yes, this belongs on my blog,” unless it doesn’t belong being written somewhere at all. One reason I blog is because it’s helped me say less in public, on the internet, because I realized if I didn’t want it on my blog, I probably didn’t need to say it at all. I auto-delete Tweets precisely because if a thought makes it through this filtering system, it’s almost always an ephemeral thought that doesn’t belong having some kind of permanent public record any more than an offhand comment made at social gathering with friends and acquaintances (remember those?). ↩︎