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These past few months have passed like fog, in which so much has happened, but its happening has been obscured. I've been unable to write about it. I even opened my novel the other day to discover I hadn't worked on it in a month.
This space has become too dense, somehow. What started as an anonymous yawp to the cyberverse has become the real and tangible community of my friends. I just counted: I have 99 LJ friends (I need one more!). 12 are communities or feeds. 5 of them are people I don't know in real life. When I started out here, nearly three years ago, I added people based on interests. Then I started meeting the people I'd added. Now, I only add people because I know them in real life already. What can I write about any person that won't affect another person somehow?
This used to be a place where I aired everything I was feeling, every experience and gesture, every new wonder. Now I'm paralyzed by the text box on the screen, and I don't know what I can say, only that I need to say it, need to have it read. I didn't used to journal this way. I have books filled with my mannish cursive, written furiously in the dark, on trains, in bed, while walking, while not paying attention in class. At work. It was for me, all for me. Now and then I still keep these journals, but this, this space, became the place in recent years where I told my story. Now I had an audience.
And now that audience is too close to be an audience anymore; they're parts of this life, integral to it, at times at odds with each other, at times at odds with me. But no longer passive, appreciative recipients of my half-artful descriptions of my strange evolving existance. They're the reasons, the means, the path of the evolution itself. How can I write it here? What if I get it wrong? My impressions, my feelings, are no longer adequate for the story I'm telling, not to this audience. To many of you, it's no longer a story.
Why does it have to be a story? Unclear. My journals were always written only for my own amusement. I made myself laugh, I made myself think. I worked out difficult things by writing about them, messily, without ceremony, and yet, still, with some sense of artistry. I had to satisfy at least myself. I was my own most and least forgiving audience, and it was enough.
Once I started gaining a loving community, finding what I wanted my life to be, feeling I finally had friends and acquaintances who understood, somewhat, what I was about, this space became a sounding board for everything I was going through. Everyone was supportive, made astute comments, bolstered my ego. Sometimes people said my writing was the best thing they'd seen on LJ. Sometimes people were moved to tears; sometimes just to thought. It was a new world for me: having my writing accepted and lauded nearly daily; having my life stories and tribulations thought at least interesting by other people, people I respected and sometimes loved.
It seems to be time for a change, time for more privacy again. It's not my style; since I've truly come into who I want to be, I've wanted to be completely open about it, to live openly, to feel openly. But it's become more complicated than that. I'm not sure what direction this journal will take. Perhaps I'll move to a new name and build a new base, write out all of my feelings again to that anonymous mob until everyone finds me again. Perhaps I'll just stay here and get brave again. I think I need to wait until things stabilize. Live and work and love and hope that everything can coalesce in some way, that this life isn't just a series of uncertainties dotted with devastating passions and ecstasies. That there is some security, here. That there can be the family, the life I've dreamed of, the home I've never found.
This space has become too dense, somehow. What started as an anonymous yawp to the cyberverse has become the real and tangible community of my friends. I just counted: I have 99 LJ friends (I need one more!). 12 are communities or feeds. 5 of them are people I don't know in real life. When I started out here, nearly three years ago, I added people based on interests. Then I started meeting the people I'd added. Now, I only add people because I know them in real life already. What can I write about any person that won't affect another person somehow?
This used to be a place where I aired everything I was feeling, every experience and gesture, every new wonder. Now I'm paralyzed by the text box on the screen, and I don't know what I can say, only that I need to say it, need to have it read. I didn't used to journal this way. I have books filled with my mannish cursive, written furiously in the dark, on trains, in bed, while walking, while not paying attention in class. At work. It was for me, all for me. Now and then I still keep these journals, but this, this space, became the place in recent years where I told my story. Now I had an audience.
And now that audience is too close to be an audience anymore; they're parts of this life, integral to it, at times at odds with each other, at times at odds with me. But no longer passive, appreciative recipients of my half-artful descriptions of my strange evolving existance. They're the reasons, the means, the path of the evolution itself. How can I write it here? What if I get it wrong? My impressions, my feelings, are no longer adequate for the story I'm telling, not to this audience. To many of you, it's no longer a story.
Why does it have to be a story? Unclear. My journals were always written only for my own amusement. I made myself laugh, I made myself think. I worked out difficult things by writing about them, messily, without ceremony, and yet, still, with some sense of artistry. I had to satisfy at least myself. I was my own most and least forgiving audience, and it was enough.
Once I started gaining a loving community, finding what I wanted my life to be, feeling I finally had friends and acquaintances who understood, somewhat, what I was about, this space became a sounding board for everything I was going through. Everyone was supportive, made astute comments, bolstered my ego. Sometimes people said my writing was the best thing they'd seen on LJ. Sometimes people were moved to tears; sometimes just to thought. It was a new world for me: having my writing accepted and lauded nearly daily; having my life stories and tribulations thought at least interesting by other people, people I respected and sometimes loved.
It seems to be time for a change, time for more privacy again. It's not my style; since I've truly come into who I want to be, I've wanted to be completely open about it, to live openly, to feel openly. But it's become more complicated than that. I'm not sure what direction this journal will take. Perhaps I'll move to a new name and build a new base, write out all of my feelings again to that anonymous mob until everyone finds me again. Perhaps I'll just stay here and get brave again. I think I need to wait until things stabilize. Live and work and love and hope that everything can coalesce in some way, that this life isn't just a series of uncertainties dotted with devastating passions and ecstasies. That there is some security, here. That there can be the family, the life I've dreamed of, the home I've never found.
