Some of those features that you have do sound nice. I guess my thinking is that I could always just grep through periods of journal entries to find what I want. We’ll see if I ever actually do it (since I haven’t yet really).

I hadn’t thought of purchasing journaling software but now that I use it, it’s nice to have the search features and the categories/tags. A single day could involve several categories (feeling sad, weird happenings at work, health) and each paragraph could be highlighted with that category. I forget to use them - it’s enough to write things down but I sometimes write my dreams and searching for all “dream” categories can come in handy.

I think that you’ve mentioned the journal software before. It seems pretty cool. My method is just to write a text document with the filename of YYYYMMDD in a folder labeled journal. It’s extremely basic.

I tend to write a lot of emails to friends and tell them what is going on - it’s easier for me to tell someone what is going on than journal it although also started writing in an electronic journal (http://www.davidrm.com/thejournal/)

I used to write in actual journals but I write so much that actual handwriting is slow and can’t keep up with my ideas. The journal software is very cool - password protected, can be installed on a jumpdrive, handles tags, searching, images…

I haven’t really used all its features but it’s a great program.

I was laughing at myself a couple days ago bec. a friend kept coming back to this one sentence in her email that she wanted to keep and I had already said I thought she should ditch. I kept telling her, “You can say that if you want to. But if I were a guy getting that email, I’d just be confused.”

I mean maybe not, but I’m thinking if I can’t figure out what she means after not just hearing the email but talking with her about it for a good 15 or 20 minutes, there’s no way a guy is going to figure it out by the email alone. Although now that I’m typing all this out, I wonder if her whole point was that everything wasn’t as cut and dried as it might seem…who the heck knows. But see? Game playing or just general confusion? Who can tell?!?!?!?!?

That does seem to be one thought about these games (that they’re just extreme actions that are actually originally natural). I can understand trying to show off the good qualities first, but I’m rather partial to seeing the bad as soon as possible. If you can see the worst and still want to be with them, then you’re set, right? Less wasted time! But this is all in moderation. (As everything should be, right?)

I’m not so sure if I’m a fan of the games of holding out or reading into what he will think if you text him, though. My thoughts on that situation would be to work it out to its end in the discussion so that no guessing or second-thinking is necessary. It just doesn’t seem too wise to be wasting all of that time in uncertainty.

Thorough communication >> uncertainty, second-guessing

Right?

However, I’m definitely glad that you don’t play these manipulative and tricky games! Hm or do you…

And this computer is…flighty. It won’t even let me post to my own blog! But I’m hoping it lets me post here.

So yeah, I haven’t decided completely, but my idea is that perhaps the games are just natural actions gone wrong.

It’s like, when you go on a first date, whether or not you are playing games, you are trying to put forth your best side. It’s like a job interview - A person has all these wonderful qualities and then one has some lousy qualities. So he or she tries to present the good qualities first. If the other person likes the good qualities enough, he or she will be willing to accept the rotten qualities. And then maybe the game playing comes in when the other person tries too hard to disguise the rotten qualities, or tries to hard to play up the good qualities.

Or a little further into dating there are other things to negotiate - how often do you see each other? Talk to each other? Operating on the assumption that one person will want more contact than the other, one person has to learn to give the other person leeway, or one person has to be in more contact than he or she wants or can reasonably provide. So here’s another place games can start (”I’m not calling him because he didn’t return my last call for three hours!” or “If I text him this, he’s going to think that”). It’s all a lot to negotiate, and though I don’t think of myself as someone who plays games at all, I do think some of the negotiations lend themselves to be taken a bit too far, even if it’s only not to hurt the other person’s feelings.