To write again

[jehoshabeath]

Ever since graduate school, I've felt anxious sharing on my journal. I've still written posts, but I feel much more restricted in what I can say. I want to remain anonymous, but I don't feel like I can be these days. What if my coworkers read my complaints and struggles? I want to share, but I also feel like I need to put on a front because I'm

Comments

[olifhar]

Privacy has also been a main reason I haven't been posting as much, and as candidly. But along with that goes the idea of intimacy.

Livejournal still has some of the best privacy controls around, but there's a greater tension between privacy and sharing. I really miss the days when I could make a friends only post, and know that at least a few of my best friends would actually read it. Now most of them who still bother to share things post on social media, which feels noisy and full of needlessly heated arguments.

I've formed a nice community on Slack that sort of fills the space that LJ once filled. But Slack is a chat room platform--it's not meant for long prose. So while meaningful, it's just not the same. I have set up a private Discourse forum for discussion, but our small group rarely uses it. (That's okay with me--it's still useful in bits and pieces.)

Now, you're one of my only active LJ friends left, and I'm very thankful you still write here.

[jehoshabeath]

I really relate to what you're saying. Thanks for sharing some of these alternate channels that you've been using. I've been dabbling in Twitter, but mostly for the birding community and Pokemon merch updates.

I would love to see more people move back to lj from the busy social media platforms. But I guess in the meantime I can do some experimenting here again. I'm glad to have a place to come back to :)

Thanks for continuing to read and share here, Oliver. I really appreciate it.

[olifhar]

Sure thing! Your post has prompted me to think about posting more on LJ. I just finished a public blog post for some friends--they have several thousand users and I'm pretty nervous. But in the process, I thought of other things I wanted to explore, but in a more private or anonymous space. In general think private activity helps us cope with public activity. I don't separate my work and personal life per se, but I have felt the increasing importantance of separating public and private spheres as I've grown older, including areas outside of writing and communication.

(Sorry about the anonymous comment earlier--I forgot to log in. You can delete that one!)