Old dog new tricks?
hmm.
I get these moods sometimes. Moods that seem to be this tumultuous mix of trepidation and nostalgia, with maybe a light sprinkling of anxiety peppered in there too. I can't ever understand what it is my subconscious is trying to tell me, it seems like I am anticipating a new horizons approach and trying to remember who I am as though I've forgotten all at the same time. Like looking back and searching within in order to face the first step that could potentially be a flying leap. I don't understand what causes this, a part of me thinks its somewhat prescient but I never really know until its too late to matter.
Regardless of what it is or why I feel it I always find myself doing the same thing, only as time progresses and circumstances change the same thing I return to doing changes slightly. I guess its more an accumulation and a transition of format that causes the differences but I catch myself poring over my old written works. These days sadly its limited mostly to social media interactions. I just went through my Facebook's entire activity feed from its most recent back to my very first post. Not just my wall posts, but even the comments I put on other peoples posts and the threads that those contributed to. I observed some things about the way my writing style, tone, and content has changed over the duration that I was evaluating. Perhaps that is the point of the way that I feel to motivate the behavior. Maybe after an amount of time I can begin to fragment, maybe this is the way I find out how the pieces have broken. To compare over time the differences in my expression and speculate on why it has changed.
I've been very antagonistic in the last few years, more adversarial, more hostile even. When I write anything now it tends to be my effort to harass someone else's ideological views if I don't like them. Most of my social media interactions have been political or social debates about current events. I've been trying to unpack my motivations. I seem to justify myself to others as being an advocate for better morals and that I'm trying to shift peoples hearts and minds to believe more sensible things than what I see in them. Except if that were true, why do most of my attempts at dialogue end up hostile and insulting at worst, condescending and unappreciated at best? These interactions usually start out neutral, I may even genuinely start out with good intentions evident in my tone and word choice but it doesn't take long for them to devolve.
I'm trying to decide who I should believe, my own justifications to myself that I am striving to enlighten anyone I encounter within my social media reach? Or the people I interact with who tell me I'm just trying to flex my intellect and stroke my own ego at their expense? I was actually able to pinpoint the approximate year that I noticed this pivot into antagonism, perhaps it is more complicated than simply my own motivations. I wonder if there are environmental conditions that are driving these behavioral changes? Or maybe this is just the natural progression of my character developing? Do I have a choice in its direction? Am I the master of my fate? It may not surprise you to read that my tone, context, and demeanor pivoted into its antagonistic nature shortly after the most recent presidential election. The number of sparked debates that resulted in lost friends or blocked strangers increased dramatically after tRump got elected. I think I am mostly just reactionary, I don't go out looking for people to get into arguments with. I'll encounter them naturally through friends of friends or the public content Facebook puts out there for people to react to. So maybe I'm just seeing so much more of the dumb, not well rationalized, but emphatically expressed philosophies of the types of people who it would make sense would feel emboldened by the change in climate to voice opinions they normally wouldn't.
Stepping back it seems possible that this is not an issue that has a single vector or root cause. Maybe its a mix of my frustration with the way things are directly clashing with this horde of recently emboldened newly minted keyboard warriors. Like I'd be less of an asshole if there weren't so many people out there that deserve the asshole treatment once I've engaged them in conversation.
but maybe thats just my ego talking...
I get these moods sometimes. Moods that seem to be this tumultuous mix of trepidation and nostalgia, with maybe a light sprinkling of anxiety peppered in there too. I can't ever understand what it is my subconscious is trying to tell me, it seems like I am anticipating a new horizons approach and trying to remember who I am as though I've forgotten all at the same time. Like looking back and searching within in order to face the first step that could potentially be a flying leap. I don't understand what causes this, a part of me thinks its somewhat prescient but I never really know until its too late to matter.
Regardless of what it is or why I feel it I always find myself doing the same thing, only as time progresses and circumstances change the same thing I return to doing changes slightly. I guess its more an accumulation and a transition of format that causes the differences but I catch myself poring over my old written works. These days sadly its limited mostly to social media interactions. I just went through my Facebook's entire activity feed from its most recent back to my very first post. Not just my wall posts, but even the comments I put on other peoples posts and the threads that those contributed to. I observed some things about the way my writing style, tone, and content has changed over the duration that I was evaluating. Perhaps that is the point of the way that I feel to motivate the behavior. Maybe after an amount of time I can begin to fragment, maybe this is the way I find out how the pieces have broken. To compare over time the differences in my expression and speculate on why it has changed.
I've been very antagonistic in the last few years, more adversarial, more hostile even. When I write anything now it tends to be my effort to harass someone else's ideological views if I don't like them. Most of my social media interactions have been political or social debates about current events. I've been trying to unpack my motivations. I seem to justify myself to others as being an advocate for better morals and that I'm trying to shift peoples hearts and minds to believe more sensible things than what I see in them. Except if that were true, why do most of my attempts at dialogue end up hostile and insulting at worst, condescending and unappreciated at best? These interactions usually start out neutral, I may even genuinely start out with good intentions evident in my tone and word choice but it doesn't take long for them to devolve.
I'm trying to decide who I should believe, my own justifications to myself that I am striving to enlighten anyone I encounter within my social media reach? Or the people I interact with who tell me I'm just trying to flex my intellect and stroke my own ego at their expense? I was actually able to pinpoint the approximate year that I noticed this pivot into antagonism, perhaps it is more complicated than simply my own motivations. I wonder if there are environmental conditions that are driving these behavioral changes? Or maybe this is just the natural progression of my character developing? Do I have a choice in its direction? Am I the master of my fate? It may not surprise you to read that my tone, context, and demeanor pivoted into its antagonistic nature shortly after the most recent presidential election. The number of sparked debates that resulted in lost friends or blocked strangers increased dramatically after tRump got elected. I think I am mostly just reactionary, I don't go out looking for people to get into arguments with. I'll encounter them naturally through friends of friends or the public content Facebook puts out there for people to react to. So maybe I'm just seeing so much more of the dumb, not well rationalized, but emphatically expressed philosophies of the types of people who it would make sense would feel emboldened by the change in climate to voice opinions they normally wouldn't.
Stepping back it seems possible that this is not an issue that has a single vector or root cause. Maybe its a mix of my frustration with the way things are directly clashing with this horde of recently emboldened newly minted keyboard warriors. Like I'd be less of an asshole if there weren't so many people out there that deserve the asshole treatment once I've engaged them in conversation.
but maybe thats just my ego talking...