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I've been working on documenting personal experiences from my life, with the thought of maybe sharing them someday. But I keep hitting this wall of wondering how personal is too personal.

When you're writing about life experiences, especially difficult ones, how do you decide what to share and what to keep private? I believe in the power of sharing personal stories for connection and healing, but I also worry about oversharing or exposing things that should remain private.

This is especially tricky with family life stories where other people are involved. How do you navigate writing about experiences that involve other people's lives too?

This is such an important question. I've grappled with it a lot in my own writing about personal experiences.

What's helped me is thinking about purpose. Why am I sharing this story? If it's to help others feel less alone, or to process my own healing, that feels like a good reason. If it's just for shock value or attention, maybe not.

With family life stories, I've found it helpful to focus on my own experience and reactions rather than making judgments about others. This is how I experienced this situation" rather than "This person did this bad thing."

Also, time helps. Writing about something fresh is different from writing with years of perspective. The distance often reveals what's essential to share versus what's still too raw.

I think about this constantly when collecting and sharing inspirational life stories. My guideline: share wounds, not weapons.

What I mean is, it's okay to write about being hurt, but be careful about naming and shaming the people who hurt you. Focus on your healing journey rather than their actions.

With family stories, I try to write with love and complexity. People aren't villains or heroes - they're complicated. Showing that complexity feels more honest and less damaging than creating one-dimensional portraits.

Also, consider your audience. Writing for public publication requires different boundaries than writing for family archives or personal processing.

For me, the line is about harm. Will sharing this story cause active harm to someone else? That's where I draw the boundary.

But I also believe in the healing power of sharing personal stories. Sometimes the most difficult experiences are the ones that most need to be shared, because they help others feel less alone.

With family involvement, I've found it helpful to change identifying details if the story is sensitive. Or to focus on my own growth and learning from the situation rather than blaming others.

Ultimately, I think we have to trust our own intuition about what feels right to share. If something feels violating to write about, it probably is.

I approach this question through the lens of transformation. Am I sharing this story to show how I grew through difficulty, or am I just rehashing trauma?

The stories that feel worth sharing are ones where I can show the arc - the challenge, the struggle, the learning, the growth. That feels different from just exposing painful experiences.

With family stories, I focus on patterns and themes rather than specific incidents. This is how our family dealt with conflict" rather than "This is the terrible thing Uncle Bob did at Thanksgiving 1998."

Also, I sometimes write stories and then sit with them for months before deciding whether to share. Time gives perspective on what's essential versus what's just raw emotion.

When writing about travel experiences involving other people, I'm careful about how I portray locals. It's easy to fall into stereotypes or exoticization.

My rule: write about people as individuals, not representatives of their culture. Focus on their humanity, their complexity, their specific story rather than making them symbolic.

With difficult travel experiences, I ask myself: Is sharing this story contributing to understanding, or just complaining? There's a difference between writing about challenges in a way that reveals cultural learning versus just listing grievances.

I also consider whether I have permission to tell someone else's story. If it's central to my experience but involves them deeply, I might change details or seek their input.

I just realized my Epic Games library has ballooned to over 200 titles, almost all from the weekly giveaways. It feels kind of pointless having so many when I know I’ll never install most of them, but I also can’t bring myself to hide or ignore them because, well, they’re free and *mine*. Does anyone else just end up with a massive pile of unplayed games from these free promotions?

Yep, I accidentally crept past 200 freebies too. They’re free, so I tell myself I should own them all, but most of them stay uninstalled and just clutter the library.

I tried sorting by last played and pruning the obvious dead weight, but deleting or hiding them still felt like betraying a gift.

I did a sweep from Epic Games freebies and kept only a handful I actually opened once or planned to play.

Do you think the real problem isn’t the pile but the FOMO from free stuff?

I set a simple rule: if I haven’t launched it this month, it goes to a separate shelf and I forget about it.

One night I started counting hours I spent chasing deals and by morning the thrill felt hollow, but I still kept the list.

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