Part two of a three-part series.

Last week, I began describing in here ways to get around that auspicious phrase, "I have something to say but I can't write about it in my journal right now."

Let's say for example, a journaler learns that a friend who reads their journal is addicted to drugs or alcohol. It's dangerously affecting their friend's life, but actually talking about it in an online journal might just anger their friend. It's important to the journaler because the friendship is important. It's something that's disturbing the journaler and they don't know what to do.

In the past, the journaler has probably learned that writing stuff down in a journal helps him or her think things through and improves how they approach life. This issue is very different, though. It doesn't just involve them directly. It affects a friend, and they won't get the person's permission to talk about it. They don't know what they can do to get whatever's on their mind into an online diary.

They want to talk about it. They just don't know how.

I've always been an advocate of being up front with those involved and finding out how they feel about it. However, this approach probably won't work in this instance. Today, as well as next week, I share a few other alternatives.

Biding Time

Sometimes it's something that you'll be able to talk about in a few weeks or months, but just not right now. Small comfort, of course... it's happening now and it's now that you feel a need to get it out of you.

Instead of mentioning it in your journal, save the entry for something else. Then, after you're done with the day's (sanitized) entry, start a separate file in which you pour out your heart, knowing ahead of time you will not be posting it in your journal just yet. Say everything you want to say. Get it all out of you. Maybe date the entry for a month from now. Then save the file and set it aside. Make a note to yourself to remind you that it's there.

A few weeks or a month later, go back and read it again. Can you post it now? Are the events of the time really no longer as pressing and sensitive as they were? If you still can't, give it more time to stew. At the very least, you have documented it for yourself. You got it out, without hinting to your 'audience' that you were not letting them in on something.

When I do this, I sometimes add a disclaimer at the top of the file in question, explaining when this was actually written and why I felt uncomfortable posting it at the time. You might even want to go through it and make a few changes here and there. Consider making the changes with a different font color, or italicizing them, so you know what was written a month ago and what you're adding or editing now.

Artsy Fartsy

Early on in my journaling, my romantic life became very complicated. It wasn't as a result of my journaling, but it perhaps helped to be a catalyst as to why I needed to write one in the first place.

However, the ladies in question knew where my journal was. I never hid it from anybody. So there were some things I couldn't say. Some things I didn't know how to say. However I still needed to say something. Not just to them but to myself. I needed to find a way to get it out.

So I had to be innovative. I started talking about something I called the Purple Landscape, based loosely on some dreams and daydreams I had had in my childhood. Stuff that I had experienced and worked through several years before. However, it was these events in my childhood  these lessons of youth  that were helping me understand what to do now. Just like memorizing multiplication tables in gradeschool can help someone get through algebra and calculus when they get into high school and college.

Much of what I was 'documenting' in my journal read like fictional balderdash to an outsider, but it was all symbolic of what was happening to me at the time. I just presented it in a way where sometimes even those who were involved didn't know what was really going on. It was a way to get it out that I could live with. Sort of like fictionalizing real life. I personally believe that was some of my better stuff in my journal.

Maybe you can't talk directly about what is going on in your life right now. That doesn't mean you can't "beat around the bush" a little. Get it out of you in a way that pleases both you and your audience, without risking entering the sensitive areas you're trying to avoid.

There are no real rules to online journaling. It's so new that some people can't even agree on what to call it. So in regards to your own journal, you're pretty much making up your own rules as you go along. Experiment. Be creative, spontaneous, and a little 'out there.'

It can be fun.