Wasn't I supposed to be spending less time here?
This was spawned from an abortive comment on demiurgent's last post. I figured that, like so much of what I've had to say recently, it would just be boring to the people reading Eric's journal who have no idea who I am and who really don't give a flying fuck at a rolling donut about my hangups, so I'm posting it here, where all of you can not give the same flying fuck but at least I'm only polluting my own journal with it.
So here's the thing: I don't actually like leaving comments.
It's not because I don't like responding to things, because I do. It's because I don't ever feel that I'm doing it adequately enough. It's the negative side of NADD and Repetitive Information Injury: I feel like I'm missing something, like in all of the information flow I've forgotten some detail, like nothing I could say would ever be up to the task.
This is backed up by the fact that, like most humans, I have a tendency to remember the negative more strongly than the positive. And so when I leave a comment and it doesn't get a response from anyone in the community, I remember it, especially when everyone else is getting responses - because my response wasn't good enough to be noticed. (I feel this way more often in weblogs and over email than on LiveJournal, because I'm rarely responding to a community in LJ, and it's somehow easier to take that one person is too busy to respond than that everybody is.) And when I leave a comment and it gets a negative response, it flat-out hurts, because I did my best and I'll be damned if it wasn't good enough. I remember negative responses to comments I left... God, nearly ten years ago.
The key point here is that when I'm thinking about leaving a comment, two things happen:
And so, by and large, I don't leave comments. Even when I think I have something important to say. Even when it's going to haunt me for the rest of the day if I don't.
It's not that I don't have anything to say about what you're writing. It's that I'm scared to say it.
So here's the thing: I don't actually like leaving comments.
It's not because I don't like responding to things, because I do. It's because I don't ever feel that I'm doing it adequately enough. It's the negative side of NADD and Repetitive Information Injury: I feel like I'm missing something, like in all of the information flow I've forgotten some detail, like nothing I could say would ever be up to the task.
This is backed up by the fact that, like most humans, I have a tendency to remember the negative more strongly than the positive. And so when I leave a comment and it doesn't get a response from anyone in the community, I remember it, especially when everyone else is getting responses - because my response wasn't good enough to be noticed. (I feel this way more often in weblogs and over email than on LiveJournal, because I'm rarely responding to a community in LJ, and it's somehow easier to take that one person is too busy to respond than that everybody is.) And when I leave a comment and it gets a negative response, it flat-out hurts, because I did my best and I'll be damned if it wasn't good enough. I remember negative responses to comments I left... God, nearly ten years ago.
The key point here is that when I'm thinking about leaving a comment, two things happen:
- I feel inadequate to the task, and
- I remember all of the times I was inadequate for the task before and was punished for it.
And so, by and large, I don't leave comments. Even when I think I have something important to say. Even when it's going to haunt me for the rest of the day if I don't.
It's not that I don't have anything to say about what you're writing. It's that I'm scared to say it.