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shadowkatPondering this livejournal habit. Been considering discontinuing. Breaking it off after a while...letting the postings dwindle away slowly, bit by bit.
Why? Well it feels less rewarding then it did before somehow, less connecting.
Like, as my pal Wales would state, there's a wall of ice separating us. Or we are mostly communicating behind a wall of masks. In some ways, I miss the more personal email - that I exchanged when I had the time with a few long distant friends. Hard to keep that up as well. An email only relationship.
It might be different, I suppose, if the people I saw in my daily life, face to face, kept journals, but outside of cjlasky, none do. As time wears on, the long distance relationships falter - as they often do without real face to face contact.
So the question becomes I guess - why am I posting these entries? Why not just stop cold? Would anyone really miss me if I did? Oh maybe for the first three or four months, the people who friended me might. Then again maybe not.
Is it to play with writing? Is it to get validation? Can't be that - get few if any responses to my posts nowadays, but was certainly a factor a year ago.
Is it the safety? Safe? Online Posting? I must be nuts. But I think there is a safety to it. You get the odd thrill of someone seeing what your writing, some stranger, and the protection of the mask. Sort of like going to a masquerade party where one can talk for hours, make a complete fool of oneself even, be someone else, but no risks - since you don't know who they *really* are.
You can't see their face. Except at a party you do see their eyes. Here?
No.
Is the connection real? Yes and no. I think we can connect through art and words, yet, yet...it is an unsatisfactory one. I want more. I want more than the possibility of an email response. I feel at times as if I'm reading a story that is great, yet, doesn't quite deliver what I want - I'm left with that odd yearning. That empty gap. Like a dancer reaching for a partner who has found another better one. OR perhaps the child who sees the rainbow and races to find it's end. I did that once upon a time, raced to find the end of a rainbow. We dashed across yards and fences and swimming pools hunting it. But whenever we got close, it was always just ever so slightly out of reach.
Inaccessible.
Reading "the three wish tv genie meme" on my flist, you know the one where you state what you wish was different in your favorite tv show, reminds of the same yearning. The yearning I have when I start reading a fanfic, story, book or watch a movie - that starts wonderfully, is so filled with promise and ends exactly as the writer wished it to, yet leaves me feeling that gap. That wall of ice. That sense of disconnect. Wait. Wait. I want to say. Why did you not go that a way instead? But I don't need an answer, I know it well - it's because they are satisfying the desire in their heads and perhaps in those around them. Me? I am unseen, outside.
Never been much of a groupie I'm afraid. Not much into following the flow. Going to group meets? Makes me break out metaphorically in hives. Ack. Ack. I think. Too many people. Too many conversations. Plus, well, there's always that jarring sensation when one realizes that one's interests and views don't quite jive with the group's. As a child - I remember my best friend at the time informing me that we needed to change our style, our interests, our tastes, in order to "fit" in. I remember backing away, slowly. I've joined many groups in my life time, stayed with none of them, a dilettant, dabbling.
But each one without exception unnerved me after a certain point in time.
There was the inevitable clash of personality, the pressure to conform.
I see it here as well in the internet world with its music swapping, file sharing, icons building, etc. And I feel the disconnect. The inevitable wall of ice. The sense...that somehow, I can't quite conform to the group dynamic.
Something in me, prevents it - does not want it.
It's a feeling that is hard to describe in words, this weird feeling of loneliness in a world filled with people. This weird disconnect...
And yet, even with the disconnect, the wall of ice, I still post entries, like an alcoholic who says this will be their last drink or the cigarette smoker who is always about to quit. A friend told me recently that the internet became my drug [or more to the point the discussion boards then later live journal] in 2002. I believe they are right. The question is...can I or should I go off of it, stop, quit?
I think these things while investigating taking Salsa classes.
Why? Well it feels less rewarding then it did before somehow, less connecting.
Like, as my pal Wales would state, there's a wall of ice separating us. Or we are mostly communicating behind a wall of masks. In some ways, I miss the more personal email - that I exchanged when I had the time with a few long distant friends. Hard to keep that up as well. An email only relationship.
It might be different, I suppose, if the people I saw in my daily life, face to face, kept journals, but outside of cjlasky, none do. As time wears on, the long distance relationships falter - as they often do without real face to face contact.
So the question becomes I guess - why am I posting these entries? Why not just stop cold? Would anyone really miss me if I did? Oh maybe for the first three or four months, the people who friended me might. Then again maybe not.
Is it to play with writing? Is it to get validation? Can't be that - get few if any responses to my posts nowadays, but was certainly a factor a year ago.
Is it the safety? Safe? Online Posting? I must be nuts. But I think there is a safety to it. You get the odd thrill of someone seeing what your writing, some stranger, and the protection of the mask. Sort of like going to a masquerade party where one can talk for hours, make a complete fool of oneself even, be someone else, but no risks - since you don't know who they *really* are.
You can't see their face. Except at a party you do see their eyes. Here?
No.
Is the connection real? Yes and no. I think we can connect through art and words, yet, yet...it is an unsatisfactory one. I want more. I want more than the possibility of an email response. I feel at times as if I'm reading a story that is great, yet, doesn't quite deliver what I want - I'm left with that odd yearning. That empty gap. Like a dancer reaching for a partner who has found another better one. OR perhaps the child who sees the rainbow and races to find it's end. I did that once upon a time, raced to find the end of a rainbow. We dashed across yards and fences and swimming pools hunting it. But whenever we got close, it was always just ever so slightly out of reach.
Inaccessible.
Reading "the three wish tv genie meme" on my flist, you know the one where you state what you wish was different in your favorite tv show, reminds of the same yearning. The yearning I have when I start reading a fanfic, story, book or watch a movie - that starts wonderfully, is so filled with promise and ends exactly as the writer wished it to, yet leaves me feeling that gap. That wall of ice. That sense of disconnect. Wait. Wait. I want to say. Why did you not go that a way instead? But I don't need an answer, I know it well - it's because they are satisfying the desire in their heads and perhaps in those around them. Me? I am unseen, outside.
Never been much of a groupie I'm afraid. Not much into following the flow. Going to group meets? Makes me break out metaphorically in hives. Ack. Ack. I think. Too many people. Too many conversations. Plus, well, there's always that jarring sensation when one realizes that one's interests and views don't quite jive with the group's. As a child - I remember my best friend at the time informing me that we needed to change our style, our interests, our tastes, in order to "fit" in. I remember backing away, slowly. I've joined many groups in my life time, stayed with none of them, a dilettant, dabbling.
But each one without exception unnerved me after a certain point in time.
There was the inevitable clash of personality, the pressure to conform.
I see it here as well in the internet world with its music swapping, file sharing, icons building, etc. And I feel the disconnect. The inevitable wall of ice. The sense...that somehow, I can't quite conform to the group dynamic.
Something in me, prevents it - does not want it.
It's a feeling that is hard to describe in words, this weird feeling of loneliness in a world filled with people. This weird disconnect...
And yet, even with the disconnect, the wall of ice, I still post entries, like an alcoholic who says this will be their last drink or the cigarette smoker who is always about to quit. A friend told me recently that the internet became my drug [or more to the point the discussion boards then later live journal] in 2002. I believe they are right. The question is...can I or should I go off of it, stop, quit?
I think these things while investigating taking Salsa classes.
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no subject
Date: 2005-04-19 03:43 pm (UTC)That was one of the reasons I fell in love with this form of discourse. The ability to read such diverse opinions, get enraged, yet not show it.
Just be. And eventually, maybe, change my mind. Meet people with views and experiences that I could not possibly meet in my everyday life - partly because there's no way we could come into contact, due to distance, lifestyle, etc. Yet, as I post in this box - it feels oddly surreal, writing and getting responses from people, that I've never seen, do not even know their real names, the only indication I have that they are real is the words they send me written or pasted in a similar box.
I understand your sense of apartness; it is sometimes like a one way street when you put something out there, and no traffic passes by. Kind of feels like you're travelling down the highway at 3 a.m., all alone in the night. But every now and then a light appears in the distance, and it turns out to be a friend.
Yes, in a way it does feel exactly like that when I post. At times I feel as if I'm in a tunnel, thinking my thoughts aloud, whistling. Convinced I'm alone, yet at the same time oddly aware that there are people moving beside me, unseen. I light a match and see their shadows cast on the walls, too dim to make out faces or forms, and a few even speak, respond - I'm here! I'm listening! I'm muttering too. The feeling gives me an odd sense of comfort and connection admist the disconnection.
Sometimes I sit down at the keyboard, and what ends up on the screen is surprising to me; writing here is a way of making nebulous images in my mind into something lucid and clear.
Yes, that is how I'd explain many of my posts. Surprises even to me.