Oppositions Towards Diaries and Journals

At the end of September 2004, my parents read in the newspaper about a research conducted among college students and keeping a diary. The result showed that those who kept a diary had higher anxiety than those who didn’t. My parents then started "suggesting" what I should include and not include in my diary, and even talked as if keeping a diary was bad.

I have discovered some things about the article and results that the researchers and readers probably failed to notice. Research results are not always accurate, especially when the experiment is conducted on humans. People can lie on surveys and interviews. I wonder if the article said that the human subjects knew they were in an experiment, and even worse, the purpose of it, because that could affect their responses. Maybe the cause and effect are reversed: anxiety causes people to keep diaries, which is a stress reliever. People with lower anxiety do not need as many stress relievers, so they don’t keep a diary while people with higher anxiety need more stress relievers, and a diary is one of them.

Another opposition towards diaries and journals occurred at OD in July 2004 when a member put in the notes, writing is lying. an always failed attempt at perfect expression.  He also accused me for judging him, and once made the steroretypical or sexist comment (I accidentally deleted that one), I can never be a woman on an entry that had nothing to do with gender. I finally replied to his notes in his journal that if he had problems with someone’s writings, then he should just not read them, especially it the writers aren’t even talking about him or anyone in the first place. He probably fit into the description of some issues I mentioned, so he felt as if I were talking about him when I wasn’t.

By the way, if he says writing is lying, why does he write, including his journal at OD? Why do we have books, newpapers, magazines, and other writing and reading materials? If "writing is lying," then we shouldn’t have those materials or rely on them, and if we do, we should just stop and get rid of those things, and go back to the Stone Age when everything must be said and done in person, and face the inconvenience.