Unguarded post about personal things:

[wednes]

At this evenings gathering, I was talking to my buddy Kwame about the goings on with Walt, as he is not a livejournal person and, as such, had no idea that I'd been talking to my biological father after 30 some odd years. I found this particularly interesting. Kwame is a cool guy, and even though he's young, he's a good person to talk things over with. He has a unique perspective on life, probably due to his fine upbringing (he was showered with love by his mother... showered with it, I tell you!). Anyway, it made me think about how much I rely on LJ to communicate how I'm feeling, AND how much less stressful life becomes when you always have a sounding board at your disposal. Unlike a "normal" journal (which I have not kept in years) this one allows me to get input and feedback from friends and virtual friends alike. With this in mind, I can totally see how some people become internet addicts. I sit here online typing and typing, while people I see in everyday life aren't aware of significant developments in a timely way.

I used to keep a written journal in high school--and junior high too, come to think of it. Since my life was really shitty at that time, and full of angsty feelings about the day-to-day life living with a crazy woman, my journals were pretty weepy and intense. Instead of working thru the pain of living with mean, spiteful people I attached my feelings to insignificant boys from school, sadly lamenting them not being able to fullfill some ridiculous childhood idea of what it must be like to feel loved by someone. So my young girl journals were inevitably filled with sad poems about why this boy or that boy didn't love me, and lengthy prose about how sorry everyone would feel if I killed myself. I didn't really want to "snuff it" as they say, but as I was telling spiralwitch earlier, I think I did this to pretend (or maybe to assert) that I did have some control over what went on in my life. In a way, affirming my own choice to not die was empowering. Of course, my parents found and read my journals, as did some boys in high school (talk about a panicky couple of weeks) and everyone decided that I was "just trying to get attention" whatever that meant. Those journal are, of course, long gone.

The other interesting thing about LJ is that you can let people in, or keep them out. Even though most of my life is pretty open-door, I do tend to lock entries that are extrememly personal in nature. But I like to meet new people and be exposed to alternate veiwpoints, so I like to unguard as much as possible. Anyway, this entry is an excersize in being more brave...as brave as one can be hiding behind a monitor.

But back to my anecdote: Kwame suggested, as many people have, that I have freinds who are much like family. And of course, I do. I feel very fortunate and pleased to have so many honest, loyal, pleasant freinds in life, and on LJ. The support I get from you guys is staggering at times. And sometimes, when I least expect it, someone like smarbaby comes along, and reminds me how much a single thought from a single person can really brighten one's day:

enjoy this story of wednesday the witch,
in livejournal, she's found quite the niche.

popular and silly, with a love for things nerdy,
i read all her posts, even ones that are wordy.

and OH! the men fawn over her womanly wiles!
even ken jennings is sending her smiles.

And so, I say to my detractors (if any), "Put THAT in your pipes and smokes it!!!"
I'm a muse to a great artist, SUCKAH!!!

Comments

[fflo.livejournal.com]

My first journals were an assigned class project for an anomalously inspirational teacher I had in high school for three years. I guess it was something about having an audience---I soon started to write much more than was required. Part of that was that she'd write comments back in the margin. Most of the time I was just trying to amuse her, especially at first, but as I got into volumes 3 and 4 of what were eventually well over a dozen of those black-and-white speckled composition books, I'd become a bit more revealing about what was going on with me. Even after I was in her class, and in the summer, I'd give her the journal periodically; she'd read & comment and give it back. If I wanted to write something while she had it, I'd do a Makeshift Journal Entry, sometimes typing it (on a typewriter) (this was the old days), and staple it into the book proper later.

So when I tried later, in my 20's, to start a journal again, it was missing a critical element. I didn't need an audience of many, but with an audience of NONE, or of just the imaginary me reading back over things in the future, the need to express something right, or articulate what I wanted to articulate carefully, was, for me, quite diminished. I ended up becoming a letter writer. That's not so regular, though, of course, and the audience was fluctuating; plus letters are just a different medium. An interpersonal thing. Hard to say what I mean.


The other thing that struck me reading what you wrote here is how the notion of privacy works for me, particularly when I'm single. It's definitely different when I'm single. But even in general, I have some sort of boundary-issue-related awareness of the extent to which I'm hiding, and a general compulsion toward openness/exposure that very probably pushes me too far in that direction. Here I don't just mean that I never seem to care about closing curtains and such. It's that exposure of the soul that's fraught and often self-conscious for me.

I'm usually guarding against transgressing into "TMI"---a complaint I bristle at, but am horribly chagrinned to have merited, when it seems even a little serious.

At least in this place it's (relatively) easy to dismiss that (imagined) criticism with the notion that it's pretty much entirely voluntary for people to read it. (But look, I qualify even that, thinking of the potentially coercive element of community and interpersonal expectations that plays out even here.)