Dec 17, 2012 20:43
Time to spam LJ with posts as I do not wish to have incongruous thoughts in a single entry.
I think that one of the reasons my previous attempts at returning to LJ have failed is because a lot of the appeal was the community aspect of it, that other people could see what I'd written & comment on/discuss it. I'm not sure if this is down to pure vanity/attention seeking on my part or if I'm really just a very lonely sod who needs some form of human interaction every now & then, however small. I almost stooped typing that last sentence & considered deleting it half-way through as something else occurred to me, the reason I liked LJ was that it let people see what was going on inside my head in ways I could not always fully articulate in any other way. It allowed me to reach out for support I couldn't ask for otherwise & the whimsical nature of many of my posts allowed me to express a side of myself that wasn't always readily apparent. Facebook has completely taken over from all other social media but I cannot do there what I did here as it as entirely differently kettle of fish. My LJ community was exceptionally small, only a bare handful of people could see my entries & each of us could only see the entries of a few others. Facebook does not really have the facilities for long, detailed & personal entries but even if it did people would not have the time or inclination to read such an entry for each of their hundreds of Facebook friends. Because of this you only ever get inane snippets of thought that do little in the way of self-expression. This may have even altered the way I think as my brain has been rewired to work in this fashion rather than working in the deep & complex way that LJ cultivated. LJ was just so much more personal & it felt that the people reading & commenting on my posts really took & interest in me & cared about what I thought.
Facebook just appears to be yet another step towards mass production & depersonalisation & I do believe it has contributed at least something to my current crisis of mind. I do feel as though I have an unhealthy addiction to Facebook as well. It has eased up somewhat recently but I have found myself checking it every two minutes on my phone whilst at work & I have & do frequently interrupt what I am doing to check it. I have even caught myself opening up a new tab to check Facebook when I am already on a Facebook tab or checking it on my phone whilst I am already staring at in on my computer. It's constant updates create the desire to check it constantly less I miss something & the shallow & limited aspect of those updates may have lead to a diminishment in my ability to give anything my full attention for any period of time. It may also be that the sheer amount of updates, however small, makes me believe that if I leave it too long before checking I will be overwhelmed by the number of inane posts I will have to look through when I do. I cannot just completely stop however, even though this would probably be the best way to rectify the situation, because it has become a necessity for socialisation. It has become the number one way my friends communicate & organise gatherings which probably lends to the belief that I am missing out when I'm not checking Facebook as if I never checked it at all I would be sure to miss out. It is a necessary evil in many regards but it has become clear that I must temper my relationship with it.
I will also try to write here as often as I can. I would like to work on articulating my thoughts & actually have thoughts at all as my brain seems to be far too empty nowadays. To this end many of these posts may not be all that fun to read but I shall try to find things to write about that shall be at least occasionally & it would be glorious to find that whimsical part of myself that has brought me so much joy in the past.