Dry...

[kitchen_kink]

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.

Comments

[amadea.livejournal.com]

thank you for writing this, it's so well put. That's exactly what I've been going through with this medium for a long time, for a couple of years now almost. That ambivalence, sense of words as more than a story, or at least more than MY story - words could drive further action, themselves make or break relationships, not just chronicle them.

Good luck figuring out where to go with it, and any insight you want to share would be welcome!

- a fellow silent lj-er

[wacko1138.livejournal.com]

Having sat and just read for several weeks now I figure this is the right moment to stand up and say hello again fro the first time. I'm fanw's friend from Georgia who was visiting a few weeks back and attended the wine and cheese Bertrand Russell party and made friendly with Carrie.

I too have gone through this questioning and wondering at how and where to take this medium, how it should be used. I've never worded it quite as well and have yet to even come to a conclusion.

For me, everything is a story. And all stories are true.

And look, right over there is a convenient shadow for me to step back into.

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

Anonymous mobs can be very useful. I mean, everyone knows that crowds of friends can be useful, but they can also make you think long and hard (huhuhuh) about everything you say to make sure it's really fair and balanced and reasonable. The benefit of an anonymous mob is that it only follows your story through you. You are the complete author of your story, when you tell it to strangers.

Good luck finding your balance.

[wavyarms.livejournal.com]

I understand what you're saying. It's a very Heisenberg-uncertainty environment - the act of observing changes the observed in ways that can be impossible to predict. I think it's a fascinating new way of writing and interacting that blogging has opened up, and I haven't reached a point of paralysis yet, but I can easily understand how one would. Good luck finding your balance again.

[ladytabitha.livejournal.com]

One option is to continue to write, but post more things Private.  I do this; my Semagic at work is defaulted to Private, No Comments.

Another option is to open a new journal.  Keep this one for more public things, and keep the other for your own things.  Thus you get an audience, without all the trappings of one.  (I've seriously considered this.)

[starphire.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it never occurred to me that there would be totally anonymoous journalso out there, but of course there are.
Out of boredom, I tried reading the "latest posts" on the lj welcome page - a cross-sectional snapshot of the lj community.
A couple of them were exceedingly frank, and apparently aimed at noone in particular. Checking the userinfo, I found they both had 0 friends listed, nor any other clues as to who they were. And the usernames were very obscure, the sort of thing a human wouldn't guess.

[fanw.livejournal.com]

I can perfectly understand. I'm still defining what I wish to write in my LJ and what to write in my journal at home. I've ended up writing very little in my old journal and what I do write now is only the most private. It's not as representative as it once was.

I have scales of privacy.
The most private which only I know
What I'll only tell a lover
What I'll tell someone if they live across the country and are unlikely to meet the people I am talking about
What I'll tell friends
What I'll tell acquaintances

LJ blurs so many of these lines. I have people who live across the country that I now may not tell as much because I do not wish it also to be read, and potentially be hurtful or even just uncomfortable for people who live nearby. I also have acquaintances who know far more about me now than they would normally because I keep my privacy level somewhere around "local friend". Nothing that would hurt anyone, lots of stuff about myself. I guess it resolves to that.

I can't write about others, I can only write about my state of being, which is of course influenced by others, but that influence is too private a thing to discuss. I can never capture the full story of something in which I only played a part, so I don't tell it at all.

Sorry for the ramble, but this is an interesting topic.

[greendalek.livejournal.com]

Sorry to persist in being one of those aforementioned five. *grin*

This entry was a fascinating read, as always. If you ever need to vent/woolgather to a smaller audience (like...say, one), I'm at your disposal. In any event it's been very rewarding, watching you coalesce.