Random bits
Nov. 30th, 2003 11:56 pmPondered tonight the whole idea of live journal entries and the effect that posting online may have had on my creative out-put. Has it inadvertently created a creative block? Or are other factors involved? I know when I write in the online posting boxes either for live journal or for voy forums, I sometimes am aware of 5 million invisible minds and eyes focused on every error or misstep I might make, waiting just waiting to POUNCE! like a warm fluffy cat or a fangy spider depending on the post. At the same time, I'm anxiously wondering will they like it? Will they hate it? Will they come back with something that makes me rethink it? Every time I send something out there - the possibility of being rejected hangs over me. Which I no doubt deserve, since I've probably sent out rejection vibes myself from time to time.
So subconsciously when I write anything in live journal or on a voy board or as an email (although that's very different)...I feel this little voice inside my head second-guessing my every move, wondering if I'd be better off keeping these thoughts safely locked in my hard drive or in a dusty binder hidden from others eyes. Yet, a part of me feels compelled for reasons I don't quite comprehend to post it anyway, even when the responses I recieve may seem to be more negative than positive. Is this masochism on my part? I don't know. My writing style isn't very structured I'm afraid...and is quite ripe with errors in grammar, formatting, spelling, and syntax - which no matter how many times I attempt to edit, it still seems to contain. Very frustrating. Oh I concede it has structure to it (especially when I get around to editing it, which isn't very often, lazy nit that I am), but it is also quite unstructured with a sort of stream-of-consciousness free-flowing style. (Which I'm sure drives some readers to distraction). I jump tracks, go off on tangents, yet it is more controlled than my thought process - since I can edit. I do hope that people don't judge me purely on what I write...as my friend cjl has told me on many an occassion, I'm nothing like what I write...so much of me is edited out of the words that appear onscreen, so much is filtered out through the inability to find the proper syntax or word or grammatical phrase to express a feeling or thought. I also have a tendency to delete stuff...especially lately, because I've been moodier than usual. Emotionally volatile in fact. Has to do with treading water for five years, four at the evil company, and one out of it. I'm afraid I'm starting to sink and land is barely within sight.
Today after taking a long walk with a friend through the back streets of our neighborhood, I came home to discover that my landlord had responded to my pleas and the heat was on. Yay. Now, for the first time in days I'm warm and cosy listening to the hiss and crackle of the radiators. I'd begun to have fantasies of sitting on tropical beaches or sitting in front of a roaring fire. (I didn't have heat the last two weeks in my apartment and it was in the 40's and 30's, at night, 50s and 40s during the day.) Very happy to be able to type without my fingers feeling frost-bitten. It was a brisk fall day this afternoon with a just a hint of winter in the air, that soft brisk smell of chimney smoke and decaying leaf combined with baking cinnamin rolls. Have no idea where the cinnamin roll smell comes from, except that it keeps giving me a craving for cinnamin rolls. About 54 degrees, warmer than it has been and much warmer than it had been in either of our apartments. My friend had just returned from a trip to Colby Kansas with her family for Thanksgiving. 5'1 next to my 5'11 we looked quite the pair, a regular mutt and jeff, as my mother used to say. (Have no idea who mutt and jeff are.) Brushing our feet through the mixture of stale decaying leaves still on the sidewalks we ambled towards the Brooklyn Promendade where we sat for a while on a bench overlooking the Manhattan skyline and the Brooklyn Bridge, discussing people, life, and post-structuralism vs. structuralism. After reading![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
superplin's excellent review of Destiny, I'd come to the conclusion that maybe I'm a post-structuralist (I'd thought I was a structuralist) but superplin's definition of post-structuralist fits me better. This would explain a lot, especially some of my heated disagreements online. (Why do I keep hunting explanations for disagreements? Probably because I hate conflict and am non-confrontational by nature - intense conflict makes me ill. Although being stubborn, somewhat opinionated and a masochist - I get into heated debates online all the time...sigh.) My friend, I'll call her Wales, questioned this. I told her while I could accept the structure of things and even liked structures, I did not like to have them imposed on me. Also while I believed in God, more or less, I did not believe in fate or destiny or determinism - I believe we determin and make our own fate - God may make suggestions from time to time, point out different paths, but we choose them. Experience has taught me this. Wales argued that isn't our society built upon a structuralist point of view? Isn't it based on things like fate and natural selection, the inevitablity of things? I argued that I didn't think it was that simple. That someone may change the course of history based on an idea that had zip to do with biology but had to with luck or desire or rational thought. That, the human dilemma may actually be our inability to accept the fact that two opposing views can co-exist in the same space. That maybe both structuralism and post-structuralism co-existed. Black and White can be one. And someone can decide to do something for no good reason outside of the fact that it just happened to feel right at the time. She wasn't sure what that had to do with natural selection and writing this? Can't say I blame her. Actually my musings confuse me sometimes, unstructured and thrown out randomly. She did make me feel good though, when she told me: "Thanks for walking with me today, I really enjoy talking with you, you're really interesting and very smart." I was taken aback and warmed by this comment and told her so. Lately I'd begun to question my abilities. I'd begun to get caught up in my own self-reflective loop ...which was why getting out and having these long walks and discussions with friends is sooo important. It's also I think why it's important to interact with people who strongly disagree with me whether online or off, as well as those who strongly agree - it protects me from getting caught in the self-reflective loop.
On Thanksgiving I watched several movies. The best of the bunch were The Fisher King and The Two Towers. ( spoilers for Two Towers and Fisher King )
So subconsciously when I write anything in live journal or on a voy board or as an email (although that's very different)...I feel this little voice inside my head second-guessing my every move, wondering if I'd be better off keeping these thoughts safely locked in my hard drive or in a dusty binder hidden from others eyes. Yet, a part of me feels compelled for reasons I don't quite comprehend to post it anyway, even when the responses I recieve may seem to be more negative than positive. Is this masochism on my part? I don't know. My writing style isn't very structured I'm afraid...and is quite ripe with errors in grammar, formatting, spelling, and syntax - which no matter how many times I attempt to edit, it still seems to contain. Very frustrating. Oh I concede it has structure to it (especially when I get around to editing it, which isn't very often, lazy nit that I am), but it is also quite unstructured with a sort of stream-of-consciousness free-flowing style. (Which I'm sure drives some readers to distraction). I jump tracks, go off on tangents, yet it is more controlled than my thought process - since I can edit. I do hope that people don't judge me purely on what I write...as my friend cjl has told me on many an occassion, I'm nothing like what I write...so much of me is edited out of the words that appear onscreen, so much is filtered out through the inability to find the proper syntax or word or grammatical phrase to express a feeling or thought. I also have a tendency to delete stuff...especially lately, because I've been moodier than usual. Emotionally volatile in fact. Has to do with treading water for five years, four at the evil company, and one out of it. I'm afraid I'm starting to sink and land is barely within sight.
Today after taking a long walk with a friend through the back streets of our neighborhood, I came home to discover that my landlord had responded to my pleas and the heat was on. Yay. Now, for the first time in days I'm warm and cosy listening to the hiss and crackle of the radiators. I'd begun to have fantasies of sitting on tropical beaches or sitting in front of a roaring fire. (I didn't have heat the last two weeks in my apartment and it was in the 40's and 30's, at night, 50s and 40s during the day.) Very happy to be able to type without my fingers feeling frost-bitten. It was a brisk fall day this afternoon with a just a hint of winter in the air, that soft brisk smell of chimney smoke and decaying leaf combined with baking cinnamin rolls. Have no idea where the cinnamin roll smell comes from, except that it keeps giving me a craving for cinnamin rolls. About 54 degrees, warmer than it has been and much warmer than it had been in either of our apartments. My friend had just returned from a trip to Colby Kansas with her family for Thanksgiving. 5'1 next to my 5'11 we looked quite the pair, a regular mutt and jeff, as my mother used to say. (Have no idea who mutt and jeff are.) Brushing our feet through the mixture of stale decaying leaves still on the sidewalks we ambled towards the Brooklyn Promendade where we sat for a while on a bench overlooking the Manhattan skyline and the Brooklyn Bridge, discussing people, life, and post-structuralism vs. structuralism. After reading
superplin's excellent review of Destiny, I'd come to the conclusion that maybe I'm a post-structuralist (I'd thought I was a structuralist) but superplin's definition of post-structuralist fits me better. This would explain a lot, especially some of my heated disagreements online. (Why do I keep hunting explanations for disagreements? Probably because I hate conflict and am non-confrontational by nature - intense conflict makes me ill. Although being stubborn, somewhat opinionated and a masochist - I get into heated debates online all the time...sigh.) My friend, I'll call her Wales, questioned this. I told her while I could accept the structure of things and even liked structures, I did not like to have them imposed on me. Also while I believed in God, more or less, I did not believe in fate or destiny or determinism - I believe we determin and make our own fate - God may make suggestions from time to time, point out different paths, but we choose them. Experience has taught me this. Wales argued that isn't our society built upon a structuralist point of view? Isn't it based on things like fate and natural selection, the inevitablity of things? I argued that I didn't think it was that simple. That someone may change the course of history based on an idea that had zip to do with biology but had to with luck or desire or rational thought. That, the human dilemma may actually be our inability to accept the fact that two opposing views can co-exist in the same space. That maybe both structuralism and post-structuralism co-existed. Black and White can be one. And someone can decide to do something for no good reason outside of the fact that it just happened to feel right at the time. She wasn't sure what that had to do with natural selection and writing this? Can't say I blame her. Actually my musings confuse me sometimes, unstructured and thrown out randomly. She did make me feel good though, when she told me: "Thanks for walking with me today, I really enjoy talking with you, you're really interesting and very smart." I was taken aback and warmed by this comment and told her so. Lately I'd begun to question my abilities. I'd begun to get caught up in my own self-reflective loop ...which was why getting out and having these long walks and discussions with friends is sooo important. It's also I think why it's important to interact with people who strongly disagree with me whether online or off, as well as those who strongly agree - it protects me from getting caught in the self-reflective loop.On Thanksgiving I watched several movies. The best of the bunch were The Fisher King and The Two Towers. ( spoilers for Two Towers and Fisher King )