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I begin to suspect that I should have another journal that no one knows. There are loads of things I'd love to discuss, even just as theoretical concepts, that have occurred to or around me lately, but I can't. The people involved by and large read LJ, and it's not fair to throw their issues out for discussion by me without their knowledge that it will hit them like a bat when they go to check their flists.
I could say that these are not my stories to tell, but frankly, I don't believe that. I believe that the minute I am involved in the story, it is mine as well, and I can and should discuss what happened and how it made me feel. There's a difference between reporting an event that happened to other people and discussing something that happened to me. It just so happens that I am usually not the one things are happening to, I am the one they happen around.
I feel like I might go out on a limb today and try to discuss one of these stories, since it's something that people have been bringing to me for years now, but the risk is pretty high that I'll lose some valuable friendships if I do that.
Catch-22.
How valuable are these friendships if they are generating situations that I cannot discuss because the people involved would be mad for discussing them here? Are they actually people I want to be involved with? (an interesting typo replaced "people" with "things" there, scarily enough) I wouldn't say something like "Jane called yesterday and she was just hysterical because it turned out that Dean had hijacked an airplane to get to his mail-order bride who was stranded in Kuwait, the love slave of Jim-Bob the Oil Millionaire Extraordinaire."
No, it would be anonymous discussion of my feelings. But my feelings on so many of these things are so rarely positive (hence my desire to, you know, write about them) that I think it would be perceived as bitching and moaning, which it would be, but not maliciously, which I think it would also be seen as.
As it stands, I can't discuss the problems I have always had at relating to people on a sympathetic level - I just don't. I can't discuss my views on suicide, mental illness, or medication. I can't discuss why I have such issues with two of the three. I can't discuss that I'm being manipulated by someone who's really quite crap at it, and it's becoming a turn off, making me not want to do what they want simply because it's all they discuss.
And now that I've pissed off - at a rough guess - five people, perhaps I should quit digging. But I think it defeats the point to make a blog part of a community. I can't express my feelings when I know that the people I'm interacting with are going to read this and going to see it as part of a public forum. And I have no idea who all reads this.
I do not have the security (however stupid it was to believe) that I had using Blogger, because I was not part of any comms. I had no idea who my readership was, beyond Tararaven, Lzz, Hilarityallen, and Codesmith, simply because there was no other way to track than by comments. My thoughts there could occur in a vacuum, to all intents and purposes. I didn't have to censor the way I feel that I do with Livejournal.
It's a quandary. I don't believe at this point that switching back to Blogger is the solution, and that's not what I'm talking about. I want to know what stories are public domain, and how far am I willing to go in pissing people off by reporting my feelings on stories that involve both of us.
Once, when a friend of mine killed himself, I wound up writing a letter to him, that obviously could not be sent. Rather than sending it, I took it to the library and put it in a book that I pulled off a shelf at random. It may not get read for 50 years, it might have been read the next week. I like to think it'll get where it needs to go, just like the letter that I ran across in a book, from a woman to her boyfriend, discussing some of the issues in their relationship, came to me at the right time.
This is not that letter, and the internet is not a book. I have no idea who's out there.
I could say that these are not my stories to tell, but frankly, I don't believe that. I believe that the minute I am involved in the story, it is mine as well, and I can and should discuss what happened and how it made me feel. There's a difference between reporting an event that happened to other people and discussing something that happened to me. It just so happens that I am usually not the one things are happening to, I am the one they happen around.
I feel like I might go out on a limb today and try to discuss one of these stories, since it's something that people have been bringing to me for years now, but the risk is pretty high that I'll lose some valuable friendships if I do that.
Catch-22.
How valuable are these friendships if they are generating situations that I cannot discuss because the people involved would be mad for discussing them here? Are they actually people I want to be involved with? (an interesting typo replaced "people" with "things" there, scarily enough) I wouldn't say something like "Jane called yesterday and she was just hysterical because it turned out that Dean had hijacked an airplane to get to his mail-order bride who was stranded in Kuwait, the love slave of Jim-Bob the Oil Millionaire Extraordinaire."
No, it would be anonymous discussion of my feelings. But my feelings on so many of these things are so rarely positive (hence my desire to, you know, write about them) that I think it would be perceived as bitching and moaning, which it would be, but not maliciously, which I think it would also be seen as.
As it stands, I can't discuss the problems I have always had at relating to people on a sympathetic level - I just don't. I can't discuss my views on suicide, mental illness, or medication. I can't discuss why I have such issues with two of the three. I can't discuss that I'm being manipulated by someone who's really quite crap at it, and it's becoming a turn off, making me not want to do what they want simply because it's all they discuss.
And now that I've pissed off - at a rough guess - five people, perhaps I should quit digging. But I think it defeats the point to make a blog part of a community. I can't express my feelings when I know that the people I'm interacting with are going to read this and going to see it as part of a public forum. And I have no idea who all reads this.
I do not have the security (however stupid it was to believe) that I had using Blogger, because I was not part of any comms. I had no idea who my readership was, beyond Tararaven, Lzz, Hilarityallen, and Codesmith, simply because there was no other way to track than by comments. My thoughts there could occur in a vacuum, to all intents and purposes. I didn't have to censor the way I feel that I do with Livejournal.
It's a quandary. I don't believe at this point that switching back to Blogger is the solution, and that's not what I'm talking about. I want to know what stories are public domain, and how far am I willing to go in pissing people off by reporting my feelings on stories that involve both of us.
Once, when a friend of mine killed himself, I wound up writing a letter to him, that obviously could not be sent. Rather than sending it, I took it to the library and put it in a book that I pulled off a shelf at random. It may not get read for 50 years, it might have been read the next week. I like to think it'll get where it needs to go, just like the letter that I ran across in a book, from a woman to her boyfriend, discussing some of the issues in their relationship, came to me at the right time.
This is not that letter, and the internet is not a book. I have no idea who's out there.
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From:
no subject
I mean, it's well and good to say that I'll do what I want, but it's like listening to a pyromaniac in the midst of angst about lighting a fire and saying, "Oh, look, BP's having a sale on gas!" Not appropriate to the situation. And as you in particular know, I tend to get very Vulcan/impassionate about a lot of emotional topics.