Let me tell you that, first thing off the plane from Seattle, it is not fun to find out that your online diary has been discovered by your co-workers. And not just one co-worker. I don't know who it was who found it, though I suppose I was sort of asking for it by using the station's call letters and by calling people who work there by their real first names, but that person seems not to have done me the favor of confronting me about it; rather, Mike tells me that it's "the most popular reading material around the station this past week."

So what do I do? Go back and change all the names? Delete every entry that might possibly be offensive to anyone? Move my diary (oh man, I really don't want to do that)? Take it all down and try to forget about it? It's been too good for me to do that. And I can't do anything about the people who've already seen it. What they saw, they saw. I'd be willing to bet that very few people who play a significant role in the life of any particular person would honestly want to read that person's uncensored diary.

But the station's a pretty close-knit environment, and people don't much keep things to themselves, which means that more people will probably continue to see this. I'm going to have to make a decision -- soon -- about what to do. This is all mightily complicated by the fact that I'm not even in Charlottesville right now, and I can't talk to anyone who has read the thing, so I don't know how much damage it's done.

And I can't decide how much, if any, of it is my fault.

Please don't make me become one of those diarists who calls everyone by a euphemism, or who refuses to address anything particularly personal. That's a decision every diarist makes. I made my decision. Now... I have to decide what to do.

I wish the first person to see it had just confronted me. I honestly can't imagine I would have done anything else in a similar situation.

So if my diary ends up metamorphosing somehow, or disappearing, or something, you'll know why. And I'll likely be pretty damn bitter about the whole thing.