Zombie Journal
*tap tap* Is this thing on?
*tumbleweeds* *hawk screech*
Hm. Maybe not so much. Ah, well.
I realize LJ is the cranky ol' lady of the social-media intarweebs, but over the past couple of years of posting here rarely, and then not at all, I've realized that the other places I frequent lack a key thing that I still need from this one: a useful confessional. So, here I am, back again, blathering more or less into the wilderness. Will anyone listen? No clue. But that's almost beside the point, actually.
I've been backsliding lately into some less-than-healthy behaviors, and I think part of it is because I no longer have an easy way to get icky stuff off my chest/process rabid brain weasels. I've always been a journaler, of a sort, because writing things down helps me work through them. Stoopid ADD means just plain thinking about things doesn't always help, because everything gets tangled up and shoots off in hundreds of different directions and it's hard to make sense of it all. Talking about them in person does help sometimes--the feedback I get from M when I unload on him is frequently very helpful--but sometimes I need something more extensive or Id-level than is appropriate or useful. Ergo: writing.
Unfortunately, I haven't had an easy way to do this lately save just opening up a Word doc and typing. I'm on almost every social-media out there, but while each has its advantages, and has become a place for sharing different parts of my life/interests/thoughts, none of them are really appropriate for this purpose.
Here's a rundown of where I am these days, for those wondering (or showing up here from elsewhere):
Twitter: 80% of this is political/justice RTs and rants. Another 15% is pop-culture squee, particularly stanning TV writers and some actors. The remaining 5% is potpourri, including the occasional late-night personal rant.
Unfortunately, Twitter is 100% public, and I also use it quite a lot to speak from a professional perspective. Add in being infested by hateful, sometimes threatening trolls, and it's a crapshoot as to whether a given tweet might actually cause me some serious heartache somehow.
Tumblr: Much of fandom seems to have moved over there these days, and I with it. The lion's share of my stuff there is therefore pop-culture related, and usually whatever my obsession of the moment is. The past year or so that's been Vikings, with a smattering of Arrow, Game of Thrones, MCU and a few other things. I drop in the occasional political screed, and reblog a lot of stuff along those lines, plus a few random things, but yeah. That's where I get my fanthing on. (I'm still writing fic, BTW, and that's being posted on AO3, plus I have some fanvids on YT.)
While many folks' Tumblrs are used for personal things, too, as the bulk of my followers (quite a few, to my surprise) are there for the geekery or politics, adding in a bunch of whiny personal shit would be out of character and probably annoying. As well, it has the same problem Twitter does: too public, and therefore too much risk of shit coming down.
Facebook: This is where my day-to-day personal socializing happens. Virtually all of my meatspace friends are there, as well as several folks I met through fandom and other places who have become personal friends as well (many of whom I met here, actually!) We post about our jobs and and kids and houses and vacations and the shitty colds we get and the occasional rotten life setbacks, etc. For me, it's definitely the "social" in social media. Some of the other stuff in my life--politics and fandom--get the occasional post, but mostly I just send event invites and post pictures of my kid and coo over pictures of other people's kids.
While FB finally has some filters and other privacy controls (yay!) its format and post length (even with notes) doesn't really lend itself to the long walls-o'-text I need to write to keep my head screwed on right. This and the other two places are really about short-form communication. If it can't be conveyed in a few sentences or an image or three, it's going to get the tl;dr treatment and scrolled right on past. People read these things to get an overview of what the people they know are doing, not to get in-depth looks into their brains.
WordPress: I have two blogs there. One is a quasi-pro thing which follows a similar format to John Scalzi's blog: A professional-life perspective on a lot of political, media-analysis, and human-condition stuff, sprinkled with work chatter/marketing and the occasional high-profile personal note: life milestones, etc. The other is where I core dumped a bunch of my feelings about first-time parenthood. I haven't posted much on either blog recently, though.
As with other places, the issue with these two is absolutely no privacy controls. I wrote some fairly personal stuff on the parenting blog, but I never felt comfortable getting down to the Id level because I knew anyone could read it--including professional contacts who might have found it via the other blog. Not wanting to screw myself out of a potential job by seeming like I'm wholly unstable or just too chaotic to be professional, I've held back, so it's not really hitting the spot.
There are a few other places I show up. I have masses of pics on a Shutterfly account (I moved over there when Flickr changed its format), and like most folks, also have a basic professional profile on LinkedIn, though I never update it. I have a rarely-updated author page on Goodreads, but haven't yet participated in the community there. I also have an Instagram account, but it's only to follow other people. Most of my day-to-day rounds, however, are Twitter, FB, and Tumblr, usually in that order, and usually several times a day, so I can keep up with news as it happens (once a journalist, always a journalist, yo.)
Looking at that list, with its heavy emphasis on public and short-form posts, it's no wonder I've felt so muzzled these days. I'm posting constantly, but I'm not really posting anything seriously emotional. Because I've also been low on close meatspace friends these days, and M just doesn't have the bandwidth to play therapist for me all the time, all of the toxic brain-weasel droppings have been building up, and therefore my head needs a flush.
So. Hi. I'm posting here again.
Because most other places fill the rest of my needs, that means almost everything here from now on will be of that personal nature. It's going to be whine city here, I'm afraid. If you'd rather not sign on to that sort of thing, feel free to unfriend me, or ask me to filter you out. Almost everything is going to be friends-locked at the least, though, so if you do want to read it, make sure I have you friended here. Also, beware that there will be trigger topics galore here. A lot of my issues are based in discrimination I face, crappy health, and shitty-childhood stuff, and I'm going to Go There on a lot of that.
I may also occasionally sound less-than-justice-minded than usual. I am, as most folks know, a hardcore SJW (as the asshats put it), but as this will be Id-level stuff, there will undoubtedly be some of the darker, more selfish and less friendly parts of my brain here. Expect a lot of dumping about my frustration with some of the other corners of SJW land, for instance. My actions, especially political, are and always will be with a mind to helping as many people as possible, but sometimes I need to get selfish and that may mean not sounding charitable here and there. I am absolutely dedicated to helping others, but this is the "secure your own mask before" stuff, so fair warning.
*tumbleweeds* *hawk screech*
Hm. Maybe not so much. Ah, well.
I realize LJ is the cranky ol' lady of the social-media intarweebs, but over the past couple of years of posting here rarely, and then not at all, I've realized that the other places I frequent lack a key thing that I still need from this one: a useful confessional. So, here I am, back again, blathering more or less into the wilderness. Will anyone listen? No clue. But that's almost beside the point, actually.
I've been backsliding lately into some less-than-healthy behaviors, and I think part of it is because I no longer have an easy way to get icky stuff off my chest/process rabid brain weasels. I've always been a journaler, of a sort, because writing things down helps me work through them. Stoopid ADD means just plain thinking about things doesn't always help, because everything gets tangled up and shoots off in hundreds of different directions and it's hard to make sense of it all. Talking about them in person does help sometimes--the feedback I get from M when I unload on him is frequently very helpful--but sometimes I need something more extensive or Id-level than is appropriate or useful. Ergo: writing.
Unfortunately, I haven't had an easy way to do this lately save just opening up a Word doc and typing. I'm on almost every social-media out there, but while each has its advantages, and has become a place for sharing different parts of my life/interests/thoughts, none of them are really appropriate for this purpose.
Here's a rundown of where I am these days, for those wondering (or showing up here from elsewhere):
Twitter: 80% of this is political/justice RTs and rants. Another 15% is pop-culture squee, particularly stanning TV writers and some actors. The remaining 5% is potpourri, including the occasional late-night personal rant.
Unfortunately, Twitter is 100% public, and I also use it quite a lot to speak from a professional perspective. Add in being infested by hateful, sometimes threatening trolls, and it's a crapshoot as to whether a given tweet might actually cause me some serious heartache somehow.
Tumblr: Much of fandom seems to have moved over there these days, and I with it. The lion's share of my stuff there is therefore pop-culture related, and usually whatever my obsession of the moment is. The past year or so that's been Vikings, with a smattering of Arrow, Game of Thrones, MCU and a few other things. I drop in the occasional political screed, and reblog a lot of stuff along those lines, plus a few random things, but yeah. That's where I get my fanthing on. (I'm still writing fic, BTW, and that's being posted on AO3, plus I have some fanvids on YT.)
While many folks' Tumblrs are used for personal things, too, as the bulk of my followers (quite a few, to my surprise) are there for the geekery or politics, adding in a bunch of whiny personal shit would be out of character and probably annoying. As well, it has the same problem Twitter does: too public, and therefore too much risk of shit coming down.
Facebook: This is where my day-to-day personal socializing happens. Virtually all of my meatspace friends are there, as well as several folks I met through fandom and other places who have become personal friends as well (many of whom I met here, actually!) We post about our jobs and and kids and houses and vacations and the shitty colds we get and the occasional rotten life setbacks, etc. For me, it's definitely the "social" in social media. Some of the other stuff in my life--politics and fandom--get the occasional post, but mostly I just send event invites and post pictures of my kid and coo over pictures of other people's kids.
While FB finally has some filters and other privacy controls (yay!) its format and post length (even with notes) doesn't really lend itself to the long walls-o'-text I need to write to keep my head screwed on right. This and the other two places are really about short-form communication. If it can't be conveyed in a few sentences or an image or three, it's going to get the tl;dr treatment and scrolled right on past. People read these things to get an overview of what the people they know are doing, not to get in-depth looks into their brains.
WordPress: I have two blogs there. One is a quasi-pro thing which follows a similar format to John Scalzi's blog: A professional-life perspective on a lot of political, media-analysis, and human-condition stuff, sprinkled with work chatter/marketing and the occasional high-profile personal note: life milestones, etc. The other is where I core dumped a bunch of my feelings about first-time parenthood. I haven't posted much on either blog recently, though.
As with other places, the issue with these two is absolutely no privacy controls. I wrote some fairly personal stuff on the parenting blog, but I never felt comfortable getting down to the Id level because I knew anyone could read it--including professional contacts who might have found it via the other blog. Not wanting to screw myself out of a potential job by seeming like I'm wholly unstable or just too chaotic to be professional, I've held back, so it's not really hitting the spot.
There are a few other places I show up. I have masses of pics on a Shutterfly account (I moved over there when Flickr changed its format), and like most folks, also have a basic professional profile on LinkedIn, though I never update it. I have a rarely-updated author page on Goodreads, but haven't yet participated in the community there. I also have an Instagram account, but it's only to follow other people. Most of my day-to-day rounds, however, are Twitter, FB, and Tumblr, usually in that order, and usually several times a day, so I can keep up with news as it happens (once a journalist, always a journalist, yo.)
Looking at that list, with its heavy emphasis on public and short-form posts, it's no wonder I've felt so muzzled these days. I'm posting constantly, but I'm not really posting anything seriously emotional. Because I've also been low on close meatspace friends these days, and M just doesn't have the bandwidth to play therapist for me all the time, all of the toxic brain-weasel droppings have been building up, and therefore my head needs a flush.
So. Hi. I'm posting here again.
Because most other places fill the rest of my needs, that means almost everything here from now on will be of that personal nature. It's going to be whine city here, I'm afraid. If you'd rather not sign on to that sort of thing, feel free to unfriend me, or ask me to filter you out. Almost everything is going to be friends-locked at the least, though, so if you do want to read it, make sure I have you friended here. Also, beware that there will be trigger topics galore here. A lot of my issues are based in discrimination I face, crappy health, and shitty-childhood stuff, and I'm going to Go There on a lot of that.
I may also occasionally sound less-than-justice-minded than usual. I am, as most folks know, a hardcore SJW (as the asshats put it), but as this will be Id-level stuff, there will undoubtedly be some of the darker, more selfish and less friendly parts of my brain here. Expect a lot of dumping about my frustration with some of the other corners of SJW land, for instance. My actions, especially political, are and always will be with a mind to helping as many people as possible, but sometimes I need to get selfish and that may mean not sounding charitable here and there. I am absolutely dedicated to helping others, but this is the "secure your own mask before" stuff, so fair warning.