A Writer's Notebook, Day One-Thousand-Seven-Hundred-And-Forty-Five

I have been thinking quite a bit, lately, about the balancing of my own desire to be honest and straightforward in my writing, most particularly my poetry, and the need to be respectful of those in my life.  I've no desire to cause pain to the people I care about, wouldn't even want to do anything that would upset an acquaintance with my writing, but I also want to be able to write about my life.  For me, a part of the way I have approached this is to be emotionally honest but without always being clear about the context or the details, even, at times, not providing anything except my own impressions.  This does not always create straightforward poems, indeed, I can recognize that it might make some of my work feel obscure or, even, a bit withholding, though that later is certainly not my intention.  I think that I am learning to navigate this approach right now.  For a very long time, my general attitude was not to write about personal topics in general, unless it was through allegory, so this is still a, fairly new type of work for me.