"...let me be your symmetry."
I feel ill-disposed to updating, just because of the usual backup anxiety that builds the longer I go on a break. Plus, there are approximately two (maybe three?) sets of eyes that will ever bother to scan through my entries on their friends list, which deflates my willingness to spend time on such an obscure and limited means of social contact.
Still, I've recently had a habit of going off on long, expressly private meditative tangents in .rtf files, so it seems bizarre that I can muster up so much enthusiasm discoursing for an audience of 0, and yet have my interest fall flaccid when the number swells to 2 or 3. 20 or 30, though, and I'd be up and grinning again and ready to write my pants off.
When I'm writing for myself, I get to get away with the most egregious errors: I can make a typo and not fix it, I can mean emphasis in a word without italicizing it because I already know the fact, I can run with a train of thought without needing to go back and make sure it's reasonable, or suitably and guardedly florid. I can scream at myself in ALLCAPS to make a point, and not feel bad about breaking imaginary internet rules. There's no social satisfaction in it, but it's free and easy writing without the painful, measured cant I dictate in on this webspace.
Here, on the other hand, I have to formulate for some level of presentability, and if I have to go through that work and know that only a handful are reading it - it's effort without the gratification of knowing you're pleasing a wide audience. I hate that my subconscious puts the game into such machiavellian terms, but that's how I find myself facing the task of livejournaling lately.
On my old, old, old journal I had a friends list entirely made up of people I had no real life contact with, and I don't know why I can't augment my ranks with the same this time around. I suppose I have a hard enough time trying to figure out how one goes about making real friends these days, and any tenuous notion of how that could be accomplished in real life gets diluted beyond salvation in the inevitable depersonalizing atmosphere of the net. I could find an eminently fascinating journaler I've never met, and friend them, but then... well, they're just this guy, you know? I already have a few net-only-friends on my list, and while I read their posts and occasionally reply if there's something super-relevant at stake ("Anybody know any good NWN mods to play?"), mostly the relationship there is a weird long-distance feeling of estrangement, "seriously, what exactly am I doing here again?". Like I'm the creepy guy you don't know perched on a tree outside your house and watching/listening in on your family's dinner conversation.
I'm putting it all into overly simplistic terms, but that's what suits me and my inflated sense of philosophical worth. People are a dime a dozen in real life, physical contact does not guarantee meaningful friendship, in many ways the internet allows people to hook up with similarly-interested-others better than anything else, so this entire post is me just swinging a machete wildly in front of me so I can eventually reach the edge of the forest, look back, and say "Well, I'm glad I'm out of that mess, I'm glad I know what I'm doing." I'm good at bending words to suit my need for resolution. It works for the night, and then I wake up the next morning and notice that for all the autoconfession and artful reasoning, I'm still in the same predicament. Whatever that predicament is. I'm not exactly sure, despite six paragraphs of exposition, which just proves what I just said.
Well, it looks like I can still ramble despite my elegant thesis explaining why the immutable laws of physics forbid me from it.
(So, I went vacationing Spring Break in Costa Rica. That should be exciting, bloggable material, right? It was an awesome trip, but somehow feels irrelevant when I get up to speak, either to myself or an audience. That was great, that happened a while ago, but neither I nor anyone else would be entertained in hearing it recanted: this is how I think. Real life can only enter into my ramblings to the extent that it intersects with some great mammoth of philosophy that I'm currently wrangling, or with a current streak of self-pitying introspection. It seems as if I treat my entire life as a bothersome but necessary diversion from my thoughts, thoughts, thoughts.)
Still, I've recently had a habit of going off on long, expressly private meditative tangents in .rtf files, so it seems bizarre that I can muster up so much enthusiasm discoursing for an audience of 0, and yet have my interest fall flaccid when the number swells to 2 or 3. 20 or 30, though, and I'd be up and grinning again and ready to write my pants off.
When I'm writing for myself, I get to get away with the most egregious errors: I can make a typo and not fix it, I can mean emphasis in a word without italicizing it because I already know the fact, I can run with a train of thought without needing to go back and make sure it's reasonable, or suitably and guardedly florid. I can scream at myself in ALLCAPS to make a point, and not feel bad about breaking imaginary internet rules. There's no social satisfaction in it, but it's free and easy writing without the painful, measured cant I dictate in on this webspace.
Here, on the other hand, I have to formulate for some level of presentability, and if I have to go through that work and know that only a handful are reading it - it's effort without the gratification of knowing you're pleasing a wide audience. I hate that my subconscious puts the game into such machiavellian terms, but that's how I find myself facing the task of livejournaling lately.
On my old, old, old journal I had a friends list entirely made up of people I had no real life contact with, and I don't know why I can't augment my ranks with the same this time around. I suppose I have a hard enough time trying to figure out how one goes about making real friends these days, and any tenuous notion of how that could be accomplished in real life gets diluted beyond salvation in the inevitable depersonalizing atmosphere of the net. I could find an eminently fascinating journaler I've never met, and friend them, but then... well, they're just this guy, you know? I already have a few net-only-friends on my list, and while I read their posts and occasionally reply if there's something super-relevant at stake ("Anybody know any good NWN mods to play?"), mostly the relationship there is a weird long-distance feeling of estrangement, "seriously, what exactly am I doing here again?". Like I'm the creepy guy you don't know perched on a tree outside your house and watching/listening in on your family's dinner conversation.
I'm putting it all into overly simplistic terms, but that's what suits me and my inflated sense of philosophical worth. People are a dime a dozen in real life, physical contact does not guarantee meaningful friendship, in many ways the internet allows people to hook up with similarly-interested-others better than anything else, so this entire post is me just swinging a machete wildly in front of me so I can eventually reach the edge of the forest, look back, and say "Well, I'm glad I'm out of that mess, I'm glad I know what I'm doing." I'm good at bending words to suit my need for resolution. It works for the night, and then I wake up the next morning and notice that for all the autoconfession and artful reasoning, I'm still in the same predicament. Whatever that predicament is. I'm not exactly sure, despite six paragraphs of exposition, which just proves what I just said.
Well, it looks like I can still ramble despite my elegant thesis explaining why the immutable laws of physics forbid me from it.
(So, I went vacationing Spring Break in Costa Rica. That should be exciting, bloggable material, right? It was an awesome trip, but somehow feels irrelevant when I get up to speak, either to myself or an audience. That was great, that happened a while ago, but neither I nor anyone else would be entertained in hearing it recanted: this is how I think. Real life can only enter into my ramblings to the extent that it intersects with some great mammoth of philosophy that I'm currently wrangling, or with a current streak of self-pitying introspection. It seems as if I treat my entire life as a bothersome but necessary diversion from my thoughts, thoughts, thoughts.)