One of the things that puts me off writing more specific journals or talking about more controversial topics is the looming certainty that someone will dig them up to hurt me a decade later and otherwise nothing good will come out of them; so I keep my most important conversations in private chats. The upside is that if there's no clear thoughts in my head I can still express them there. Good for mental health.

That's fair enough and pretty understandable. I suppose I don't care enough about someone trying something like that for most of the things I might type in a public form. There's only a few things I might express in private chats that I wouldn't express in a more public format, and most of it has more to do with compartmentalising my life rather than anything else...

Myself, I don't especially like putting all the thoughts I might have put in a journal (public or private) into a private conversation, I guess because I don't like the idea of going to specific individuals/friends as "dumps" for the rather large (and inconsequential) number of thoughts I have on just about everything. Even when I have someone's permission to "vent" in conversations with them, I tend to avoid it because of the huge amount of typing I get myself into sometimes. Maybe a "Christian guilt" component here too? Dunno. (I think it was you that correctly guessed that background detail a while back)

It was me and yes, I get the part about not wanting to inconvenience others...
... my take on it is that the closest friendships only happen when you share on all aspects of living. So I have a chat where we all vent, celebrate, chit chat, share links, and everything in between. A social network so to say.
Inchoate thoughts go there to die or to fully form at last; some of those become journal posts later.

I am pretty much there with you regarding the closest friendships thing. It's usually where breaking points occur, as I've found. Which makes me wonder all the more about people who are unwilling to share anything at all about themselves; I don't tend to spend much energy on that type of person because unfortunately it becomes a one-way thing without reciprocation.

That's cool about the chat at any rate. Not sure I'd be up for something like that myself since I generally don't work well in groups, especially if there isn't some kind of hierarchy.

Insofar as "people who unwilling to share..." applies to me it's a combination of a few things:
- Habit
- The feeling of being an imposter (when I was under 21 I didn't share my age or anything that might give it away with my acquaintances who were all older than me, not because we were going to bars or anything but just because I felt like I was pretending to be something I wasn't)
- Not feeling familiar enough with people, feeds into itself
- Occasional real benefit to keep my personal details/thoughts to myself, motivates habit

Just to be clear, you specifically don't really fit into that category of people for me, and I think I understand what you mean regarding habit and real benefit there.

Okay, maybe you haven't shared about some things; on the other hand, it's easy to have a conversation with you and I feel I know enough about you as a person that you're not just some "rando" or something. I feel like I could ask you about something personal and you would probably tell me straight if you'd rather not answer, rather avoid the question altogether and I still feel like there's a chance you might answer some personal questions anyway.

What shadow said. I feel I could have a deep conversation with both of you about potentially any topic; at the very least the conversation could be about why we couldn't have a deep conversation in the first place (meta topic)

Nice to know, I feel like it's easy to accidentally rest my face into a blur and I do try to keep it from happening. (Same for Pentalis, who evidently reads these even without getting a notification.)