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Marking the point where I dropped my expectations of what my blog would be and gave myself permission to just write bits and pieces about stuff I like.
Why that wasn’t the point in the first place, I don’t know.
I’m bored to tears with a certain type of reaction I see popping up both in real life and on the internets, a knee-jerk dismissal of an entire school of thought, type of music or activity, or approach to life.
I see it with people who dismiss artists, or single moms (or women in general), liberals (or conservatives), folk musicians, PC (or Mac) users, or whathaveyou. And I jsut don’t get it. I’m all for people having opinions (hell, I have one or two myself) but I’m firmly against people pretending that those opinions are fact, that they are stating some sort of universal truth.
I can’t even imagine what it is like to not try and see why other people might like the things they do.
This isn’t a ‘Oh, why can’t we all get along?’ plea. It’s a ‘Really, you’ve got no other outlet for this crap?’
There’s an example here at Learn From My Fail where someone made the mistake of grabbing their friend, a Taekwondo practioner, from behind while they were walking in the dark and they got the crap kicked out of them. The entry is not the problem, the comment about how Taekwondo is pathetic is.
Why would you even bother to go there? You can like TKD(or anything else), you can hate it, you can think it is stupid, I don’t care. What I do care about is when people publicly casually dismiss anything they don’t do themselves. It’s one thing to do that in conversation, where you can demonstrate that you are joking, or where you know that the people around you know your history with the topic at hand, but it is a whole different thing to troll about about it and cause a shit storm*.
I mean, why would you bother? If you don’t like a band on YouTube you can just go on to something else or you can give them some critique, you don’t need to post that the band are a bunch of morons. If you think TKD is pointless, you don’t have to participate, I don’t think you are affecting TKD in the least.
Are there really people out there who are so dismissive of everything? Is this their knee-jerk reaction to everything that isn’t in their range of activities? I don’t know whether to hope that it is a thoughtless dismissal or to hope it is a considered opinion.
Because if there are people out there filled with hate that they seek out activities they dislike just to crap on them, that’s one kind of scary. If there are people out there who are so indifferent to other people and so intolerant of other people’s lives that they dismiss anything outside their sphere of interest as pathetic and pointless, that’s a whole different kind of scary.
I don’t know which is worse.
*I can almost see the people who troll on purpose, at least they are stirring up shit with intention. But the people who honestly, really feel like this is a valid form of communication, a worthwhile thing to do? They’re exhausting.
That’s ‘Anti-social’ Media not ANTI- Social Media, if you follow me.
I’m a pretty typical INFJ. If that means nothing to you, let’s summarize it by saying that I am a fairly social introvert. I need lots of time at home or my energy flags, I find casual conversations exhausting sometimes, and I don’t seek out social interaction often – but I’m in no way shy, and I can find something to talk about with almost anyone.
It’s hard to be a social introvert on social media. It takes a lot of my energy to engage with people in blog comments, or on twitter, or even on facebook, because there is so much room to be misunderstood and the effort required to maintain all of those (fairly) casual social outlets seems exhausting to me.
Sure, I can retweet what you just said. Or answer your call for information. Or I can post a ‘I’m sorry that happened’ or ‘Whoo hoo!’ in your blog comments or in reply to your facebook status but engaging in extended conversations or planning to comment on blogs/facebook/twitter feels really hard. *
I like to dig deep when I’m talking to someone. I don’t like to argue, and I try not to pry, but I do try to figure out where you’re coming from, why you think that way, and if we have common ground.
That’s hard to do online. There’s the time lag, the problem with lack of tone (my sense of humour relies a lot on tone, so it’s hard to convey my own funny), the potential to be misread or to mispeak. It makes for awkward. A whole wall of awkward I have to climb or tunnel under before I can chat with you online.
Adding to the awkward are my privacy issues. I don’t want people on twitter to know exactly where I am. I don’t want random people to be able to identify my kids from pictures on my blog. I don’t want to publish all the details of my life. The idea of doing so makes me make a squirmy motion that there are no words to describe.
The thoughts I choose to share are probably very telling in themselves. No doubt people can tell all sorts of things about me from my writing that I didn’t intend to reveal but I can live with that risk.
So, that leaves me feeling like the most Antisocial Social Media participant ever. I will chat, but only about x,y,z. I lurk and rarely comment. I’m on facebook, but I might leave a status up for a week and I hardly ever pictures. I tweet, but not every thought in my head.
I blog, but I go long stretches without saying anything. And since I won’t get too much into the details of my family’s life, I don’t always know what to talk about .
I feel like I am not fully participating in blogging, tweeting, facebooking, socializing online, but I am inching forward. I can see the Great Wall of Awkward** at all times, though, and I may never break it down. I’m not even sure I want to.
*Well, for personal stuff anyway, it’s easier for business stuff because the rules are clearer.
**Not unlike the Great Wall of China, but I doubt it is visible from space. At least I hope not. ergh
I had thought that 2008 was a difficult year. Then I met 2009. Now THAT was a difficult year.
Sure I had many marvellous moments, and I had lots of fun,so that was good. And I learned a lot of great stuff, and met some great people. So in many ways 2009 brought good things, but I was pretty annoyed with how I was operating in my own life. I was happy with my friends, with my family, with many things, but frustrated at the trouble I was causing myself by being ineffective.
As a result, 2009 felt like the most unproductive year I’ve ever had. I spent all 12 months feeling like I was running behind a train I was supposed to be on, sizing up whether I could safely jump aboard. I never could.
All manner of important events whizzed by half done and I felt like most of my work was sheer drudgery, all about getting to the end of the to do list, rather than being involved in the process of doing.
2010, however, is a shining beacon. 2010 turns 2009 from a difficult year into a learning process. All of that drudgery taught me what I need to change about how I operate in various parts of my life, it taught me what I want to spend more time on and what I want to let slide.
So I have spent the last few days making lists, and assessing my priorities, and seeing what ideas feel good. And I have made a list of intentions for this year. Not resolutions, but intentions (Thanks, Ann – I saw that in your twitterfeed). And I am feeling very optimistic about where I stand for 2010.
And today, New Year’s Day, I have already done a fun set of exercises, worked on my novel, and had a great time making pancakes with my family.
It bodes well, methinks.
For the last 262 days, I have written at least 1 page of fiction each day.
That would be really impressive if it was all part of the same work, but, alas, about 90% is unrelated little vignettes, snippets of someone’s thoughts, pieces of their lives, utterly unconnected.
I wish I could make an art project out of them or something, perhaps a huge apartment building and behind each window would be this string of thoughts from one person or another, or perhaps a conversation between the apartment’s inhabitants.
I’m not sure if I have the desire or the ability to write a novel, or even the book of short stories that I have been toying with but I do know I can write shreds of the fabric of people’s lives. I wonder if I can make a quilt out of them?
