The Crux of Me
I'm trying to relax into ONLINE SOCIALIZING while still exploring what it mean to me. What is this business of blogging? Why do I do it? What's my motivation? What exactly am I here to reveal?
A problem I've had with socializing is one of being precipitously intimate, confiding the bizarrest facts of my existence within ten minutes' acquaintance. I always regarded it as some sort of perversity; it amounted to a sabotage of relationships because I almost ALWAYS summed the contact up, determined what angle of revelation would most disturb the potential friend, and then, I couldn't resist employing that knowledge! I know, it sounds like a defense mechanism designed to mask sick insecurities.
It probably was a bit, but such behavior was MOSTLY attributable to mere immaturity. Yeah, it lingered and lingered, but then, thankfully, I got married. Thankfully in an abstract way. I'm very grateful to the person of my husband, but in a different way, I'm just grateful for the experience of marriage. I'm of the sort that NEEDS maturing events. So NOW, I don't do that nonsense so much. I don't have the emotional energy to waste on considering what other people think of my every interjection. I don't have the idle time to over-analyze every situation to an early, particlized demise.
The thing is, I have only two friends on Live Journal right now -- my husband and my sister-in-law, and I have no idea who will eventually be on the outer rings of these odd Internet circles, or who will randomly wander in. So, how do I present myself? My old tendency would have been to avoid thought of it; I feared what identity meant to me. Now, I realize identity and self aren't really disparate. I don't think the boundaries of PERSONALITY are immutable. That is, the tempering aspects, the categories of things in life that influence TRUE personality don't have to fit inside some artificial construct of nature. It's all that urbanity I've been cultivating.
Well, anyway, it's a fun video game!