I was involved in a class called The Artist's Way which required extensive journaling but forbade the use of machines to do so. Arggghh. In retrospect, I could have just gone ahead and expressed myself the way I wanted and gotten more out of it.
At any rate, my journaling for that class was explicit, delving into personal weirdness I'd never really thought about before. To some degree it became a sexual history, as memories of old partners floated up to be dealt with.
After the class was over I entered ahout 300 pp of this stuff into the trusty old laptop, then "accidentally" overwrote it with an FTP client the next week. I guess I wasn't as ready to confide as I thought. Nonetheless, the writing of it all was a great exorcism. I exorcized demons I thought I had forgotten about; bouts of drunkenness, strange sexual experimentation, all manners of things.
I told most of these to Mary, my fiancee, because she asked specific questions. [shrug]. I don't think she liked it. Still, having someone to confide in really lightened my burden. I suppose I should be telling this stuff to a shrink instead.
At any rate, I wanted you to know what had happened back there.