The evolution of actuality dot log

This was supposed to be a post on sexual tension and an inability to masturbate, but I can’t get myself to divulge it.

When I first started this journal a long time ago, the basic premise of the exercise was that I keep a log of the events in my life; an “actuality log,” of sorts. People who know me, are aware that I am notorious for forgetting details, and this journal was supposed help me in that regard; especially so that I would have something to reminisce about when I looked back. The fact that it was publicly visible was an artefact of the medium I chose, and wasn’t in my conscious thought as I began expressing myself.

And then, things changed.

I don’t know when exactly—perhaps it wasn’t even at one specific moment—but at some point along this journey, I became acutely aware of my primary audience pool: Women in their mid-to-late twenties. Single women mostly, and as it turns out, this includes single women who adore me. With this realisation came some shifts to how I went about articulating things. There were many more trips to the thesaurus, and a lot more conscious thought and proof-reading in general; for I began to care about how I sounded. Silently, I began to care about how my audience perceived me. This in itself wasn’t bad, because it typically meant that my posts started sounding a lot better—more refined and fleshed-out.

But the detrimental thing was that, at around the same time, I began to consciously work toward embedding within them a concocted idea of who I am; an idealisation, a fantasy. And with all this blurring of fantasy and reality, it turns out that actuality dot log has evolved to become anything but.

It’s just, “not actuality dot log” doesn’t have the same ring to it.