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chickentimeschickenwaysI was rereading my entries here from just after Tumblr almost mangled itself to death, and things that I have noticed:
1. good God I was having a hard time in 2019!
2. a lot of the things I was hoping to sort out at that moment, I have sorted out.
3. I've always had at least one semi-public online space which I use for external processing.
4. I'm not sure how I feel about that, these days. It feels a lot like I am putting too much weight on other people and too much of the worst parts of myself out in public. (It's true that I haven't sorted myself out altogether, but I feel much more empowered to distract myself until the badness in my heart diminishes to a manageable level. It's not perfect, but it's an improvement.)
Twitter has been sort of an experiment for me, these last two years and change. I was using it in the same combative way as other social media, and then I made a conscious decision that I was going to only use it to connect with other people and talk about things I cared about -- i.e. cheese and gardens. That hasn't totally removed the mental burden of the place, or the addictive issues I have with social media, but it has dramatically upped the level of positive interaction I have on that website. I could list 20 or 30 people I have regular pleasant conversations with over there.
One of my key tactics is trying to up the amount of time I spend talking about "things I have learned" and diminish the amount of time dedicated to "here are my opinions," and when I do have those opinions, making a careful point to hedge them round as "things that I, a fallible human being with limited experience, believe, and which are not universally applicable." I think the internet is glorious when it shares information and less so glorious when it's a place to whip around one's ego like a deadly skip-it.
I've picked cheese as my load-bearing informational dump because it seems like I naturally accumulate cheesy information, because I have a backlog of cheesy stories and experiences, and because. . . people like cheese.
Possibly more cheese to come. We shall see.
1. good God I was having a hard time in 2019!
2. a lot of the things I was hoping to sort out at that moment, I have sorted out.
3. I've always had at least one semi-public online space which I use for external processing.
4. I'm not sure how I feel about that, these days. It feels a lot like I am putting too much weight on other people and too much of the worst parts of myself out in public. (It's true that I haven't sorted myself out altogether, but I feel much more empowered to distract myself until the badness in my heart diminishes to a manageable level. It's not perfect, but it's an improvement.)
Twitter has been sort of an experiment for me, these last two years and change. I was using it in the same combative way as other social media, and then I made a conscious decision that I was going to only use it to connect with other people and talk about things I cared about -- i.e. cheese and gardens. That hasn't totally removed the mental burden of the place, or the addictive issues I have with social media, but it has dramatically upped the level of positive interaction I have on that website. I could list 20 or 30 people I have regular pleasant conversations with over there.
One of my key tactics is trying to up the amount of time I spend talking about "things I have learned" and diminish the amount of time dedicated to "here are my opinions," and when I do have those opinions, making a careful point to hedge them round as "things that I, a fallible human being with limited experience, believe, and which are not universally applicable." I think the internet is glorious when it shares information and less so glorious when it's a place to whip around one's ego like a deadly skip-it.
I've picked cheese as my load-bearing informational dump because it seems like I naturally accumulate cheesy information, because I have a backlog of cheesy stories and experiences, and because. . . people like cheese.
Possibly more cheese to come. We shall see.
