are we really the way we represent ourselves? that's the thread of the day. think about how salon covered the publication of the unedited version of sylvia plath's journals and how we feel like we might now know her a little bit better. i wonder if she thought that her journals would someday be read? when we write in personal ways, we often do so as a way to extend ourselves, to become who we think we might want to be. we leave clues about the things we do, the way we act, the people we love, and the people we hate. and we also leave things out, the things that are too painful, the things that we feel are too ordinary, the things that are probably much more revealing than the things that we include. maybe we leave things out depending on who we think may be reading. or maybe we put things in depending on who we think may be reading. am i really the person that you think i am when you read this? am i the same person in this web log that you know in real life? does the representation of who i am in this web log match up to your perceptions about who i am? or is this all just a big red herring?