lj habit

[shadowkat]

Pondering 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.

Comments

[ponygirl2000.livejournal.com]

Well, I'd miss you if you didn't post.

But I do understand what you're saying. There are times when I want to reach out and shake the internet by its metaphorical shoulders and demand that it give me what I want - except that I don't really know what I'm looking for. Is it momentary amusement? Intellectual stimulation? Connection? A narrative of other people's lives to read? Sometimes all of the above, sometimes none. I don't know. I do believe that all this internet stuff has to be just a nice complement to everyday life, but at the same time there are things that it gives me that regular life can't. Well-reasoned, written arguments for one thing - very hard to find. Sure nothing replaces a good intense face to face conversation, but there's something very satisfying about the read and response method of communication here that seems to sharpen things in my mind.

What I really think is that we're coming off an intense love affair with BtVS and the board. It's been over for a while but I still miss it, yet at the same time don't really want replace it (a little too consuming it was). We were all very engaged in that experience and it gave all of these interactions a focus and a common ground. The common ground is still there of course but everything feels a lot more scattered.

I tell myself that when this disconnect that you talk about, between what I'm reading and what I want to see, gets too bothersome then that means I should be creating something of my own. But man, that's hard.

All I know is that the story you present to us, of your life in whatever form you care to share, is interesting to me, and it's something where I want to see what happens next.

[ann1962]

I'd miss you too!!

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.

I have talked about this too. The part that is missing from these interactions. My husband thinks this is an easier way to interact without the real person present. But I disagree with that. There is a certain tangible that is missing I would agree, but there is a sharing that is more real and more profound sometimes than in many real life interactions. What that says about the quality of RL interactions is another story. I think this is another way to communicate that has its flaws. We have all seen and experienced those. But what I receive from this is incredible. I have realized so much about my fellow humans from these interactions that in many ways I did not know it was possible, except with some of my closest friends.

And this whole addiction conversation that I see creeping in lately has concerned me. Why when someone receives something positive do they think there is something the matter with it? More and more I see entries concerned with the addictive qualities of this medium. Why don’t we say that about reading, which is what I would be doing more of if I wasn’t online. I don’t think we have to worry about that as long as it isn’t interfering with life. When something gives you support when you haven’t it elsewhere, then I think that is a good thing. Not something to be feared. Personally, I am glad I found your website and read your essays. The personal aspects that came through, and still do in your lj and in entries like this, I think are a miraculous sharing of yourself. That is a good thing at least from my perspective. I am glad you post!!

I do think there is an evolution of sorts going on and I don’t know what that means. People do come and go but I think friendships have been built and like all friendships, intent keeps them alive. But I want to find out what happens next too!

[midnightsjane.livejournal.com]

I would miss your presence here. You have a way with words, a way of looking at life that is quite different from mine; I think that such differences enrich rather than impoverish. If everyone I speak with just repeats my POV, I get lazy. It's the different approach that makes me stop and investigate my own sense of what is or isn't true. One of the things I appreciate most about LJ is that I am connected to a whole array of opinions, sensibilities, attitudes through the words that appear on my screen. 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. I use my journal in many ways; it's like a diary (although I've never been much on keeping a diary), it's a forum that allows me to take a thought that I have and expand it into something coherent. 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.
As Ann says, there has been conversation about the addictive nature of LJ: I joke about it, but I'm certainly not afraid of it. It's the feeling I get from being in a conversation that stimulates and entertains me that I enjoy so much. Your part of that conversation is important and appreciated.

[ailleurs.livejournal.com]

I'd miss your rambles, but as someone who came to LJ really late in the game, I also do understand your disconnect with the medium. Fandom may have originally brought me to LJ, but it most certainly has been one of the prime reasons why I go through periods when I think I should abandon it altogether and do something more productive and constructive with the 30 minutes a day that I spend reading it.

My interim solution is to try reading the journals of people who have no relation to, interest in or bearing on the vagaries of fandom. I now read to learn and appreciate what matters in other people's lives, rather the false reality of a TV show.

[cjlasky.livejournal.com]

I'd miss you on the internet. Yes, I get to see you often, but I do love your way with words. However, if you feel you can spend your time better than LJ, then by all means, go for it: take those salsa classes. But consider this--if we both hadn't been posting on the internet, I never would have met you face-to-face, and my life would have been ten times poorer for it.

The internet v. real life question doesn't necessarily have to be a zero sum game. One can feed off the other. And you never know when the connections you've made with your friends on LJ will carry over and result in something beautiful in your "real" life.

[arethusa2.livejournal.com]

I write in lj mostly for myself. I get an idea--a way of phrasing something that I like, or an observation that I want to share--and I put it down where others can see it and maybe they'll be interested, maybe not, but I hate to waste a good idea or rant.

But I have trepidations similar to yours. I feel like I don't fit in--I alwys have, because I didn't fit in. To many problems to deal with, too many moves from one school or state to another. Many times I quit trying to fit in because I resented feeling like I wasn't good enough as I am, or I was sure that nobody would like me anyway. (Even as an adult.) I reach out, then retreat again, torn between wanting contact and fearing judgement.

But a good thing about lj is that I can retreat a little when I feel overwhelmed, and then get back into the flow when I feel more outgoing. I can very quickly make contact, or get into longer conversations. The interesting thing is that people see more of the real me through my writing than they would in months or even years of face-to-face contact. That makes me nervous, but also glad that I can be myself (more or less). It's not face-to-face--it's mind to mind, which is the addicting part, and something I don't want to give up.

[qadgop.livejournal.com]

I kinda know what you're talking about, but I think that a lot of the time the things you (general sense) get out of lj interactions are things that wouldn't necessarily come out in face-to-face conversation. I wouldn't call it a replacement for RL interaction, no; but I also think it's complementary to it. (Certainly what I talk about in lj, and the persona I seem to unconsciously use there, doesn't match the way I talk or what I talk about in person, at least as far as I can tell.)

I find, though, that when I'm writing on livejournal, it's as much for me as for any friends/prospective readers. Maybe that's what you need to ask yourself: not so much who you're doing it for, as what you yourself get out of your own writing there. I wouldn't call it an addiction, in any case; you are, after all, producing something by posting (as well as creating at least the possibility of interaction--not only between yourself and others, but between others who come across your work.

Admittedly, I'd also like to see how the drabble works out. :-)

[oursin.livejournal.com]

I'd miss your posts in the complex polyphony of voices that is lj. And I like that there are ways to be here that don't involve everybody all having the same interests, but connecting at different tangents: and that we see those other sides and interests of people that we might not encounter in f2f life. I was thinking that my conversation with NZ H on Saturday was good because it was like when I meet someone I know from lj, it was wide-ranging and flying off in lots of different directions, not just on our common scholarly interests and connections. I find it quite hard to get to that stage even with people I've known for a long time.