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Now Playing: Crosby, Stills, & Nash: 'Southern Cross'
Topic: Philosophy
[index] [bot]19:20 Tuesday, 31 January, 2006
Endwell, NY
I've been terrible about writing here this past year, and I feel bad about it. For the first half of the year, computer inaccessibility was an issue, but after that there's really not a solid reason for it. I lost a little of the charge within me to write about everything -- for some unknown reason -- and what was left of it was countered by this surprising concern for what people who read all this would think. I have a strong belief in the value of truth, so when I started writing here, I didn't care if I was revealing secret things about myself or whatever. I use pseudonyms to somewhat protect the identities of those I write about -- in case
they are concerned about what others think -- and only use one for myself because I've had blogging friends who end up with stalkers they've never met, chasing them because of things they'd read on-line. But for the people who know me and start reading what I write, I never cared if they might read something surprising. I figured that there was a large enough scope of material here that even if they didn't like one particular thing, there would be enough good stuff to redeem myself in their eyes again, or something like that. At least that was the justification I gave myself when that part of me that does indeed care about appearances would pop its head out to speak. But that is a small part of me; for the most part, I don't care what other people think. I am who I am, take me or leave me. I'm not going to pretend to be something I'm not, just to impress you. I suppose it's flattering to you when someone will go out of his or her way just for you, but I don't like the idea of going out of my way to lie to you. In fact, I'm rather offended that other people do it for each other and for me.
Anyway, this is all to demonstrate that I thought I didn't care what other people think about me, and that here I could finally just be brutally honest. If they didn't like what they were reading, they could stop. I'm not going to apologize for the truth; only a lie needs an apology.
So that's how I thought I thought. But then, something strange happened. I sent out
e-mails and Christmas cards telling everyone what I'd been up to and inviting them to read what I'd written over the past few years, and was very happy with the decision to invite them all to read. And I'm still happy with it. People that I hadn't heard from in years wrote and called, and people I see all the time told me they loved reading things I'd written, and it was all very flattering. I didn't expect such a response, I just thought people might be interested. So the strange thing was not that people told me they liked to read my ramblings (though it wasn't expected), but that I suddenly found myself becoming self-conscious. I guess I really shouldn't have been surprised about that, now that I think about it. I've actually been pretty self-conscious my entire life, just about different things than people would think of. For example, I wore nothing but sweat-pants or shorts through all of elementary school and middle school, because I found any stiffer pants to be uncomfortable, and felt there was no reason I should be uncomfortable just to appease others. Even when I was teased and bullied and beaten upon for it, I still stood my ground and kept wearing my stupid-looking sweats. I knew I was doing nothing wrong and that the bullies were, so even if being myself got me physically and emotionally hurt, I was still being true to myself and that's really what counts in life. I still think that's true, but I eventually found that a slight conformity wasn't all that bad, and helped relieve a lot of fear, so I switched to blue-jeans for all of high school. In college I turned to khaki pants, and that's what I've worn ever since, morphing only to cargo zip-off pants but sticking with the khaki motif. I don't care if cargo pants aren't appropriate for mildly dressed-up occasions, or if certain shirts I own don't match with khaki. I'm comfortable, and I'm being myself, and that's what's important.
This philosophy of doing what I want and letting others just deal with it if they don't like it is probably also why I get off track and ramble so much here; if you get bored with my lengthy explanations, I apologize, but I'm not going to edit it out. I'm not entirely off-point, I'm just trying to demonstrate the point I'm trying to make, though probably over-doing it. But whatever. I'm happy to not have an editor to have to face. :)
O.K., right, I was trying to make a point. In terms of pants, I basically don't care what others think, but in other ways I do. Music is a good example of that. I'm very rhythmically inclined (though whether this is natural or learned I've never been able to determine; I chose percussion in the 4th grade because it was different from what anyone else in my family played, and I chose different because I didn't want to be copying anybody), so the eventual, natural outcome of that inclination was for me to buy a drum set when I was in high school. I wasn't naturally gifted when it came to the coordination of playing an entire drum set, but I also wasn't bad; I just needed practice. But that practice became a very tricky thing for me. I found that, for whatever reason, I couldn't bear to make a mistake that anyone would hear. Since drums are so incredibly loud -- with no way of muting them without putting them in a sound-proof room -- that left me wanting never to play them when anyone was in the house (which they probably appreciated at first, anyway), and eventually to not wanting to play them when anybody might sneak in without me knowing it. After a few years, it became clear that I really wasn't getting our money's worth out of them, so I had my parents sell them to a family friend.
This shyness was also demonstrated when it came to auditions and solos and public speaking, none of which I could do. To this day, I would love to join a symphony and play music again (if I were living somewhere that had one) if only they wouldn't require an audition for me to get in. I'm just petrified of them. I slowly got out of my fear of public speaking the summer I worked as a kayak guide in Alaska, having to teach about nature and stuff in front of groups of up to 25 strangers. The first few weeks of teaching were nerve-wracking for me, and I was always happy to yield to someone else, but by the end of the summer I was much more comfortable with it, mistakes or not. That comfort has carried into my serving jobs, such that I have no hesitation at all if I have to address a large table of 20, 30, or 40 people, and in fact am incredibly comfortable with it. But I still don't know if I could give a speech or present a slide-show of my pictures or anything. Maybe, but I'm in no rush to try.
Alright, I'm still not getting to the point. What was it again? Man, it's way up there on the page, whatever it was. Oh, right, my reaction to people saying they'd been reading my journal. I thought I wouldn't care, and, basically, I do. Which is very frustrating. I don't want people *not* to read it. And I don't want people not to tell me that they are, because that would go against my whole stance of wanting the truth to be known at all times. So, then, what the heck am I supposed to do? If someone asked me that question about himself, I'd say that, ideally, he should just suck it up and write honestly anyway. Obviously that advice hasn't worked very well for me. Although, I do have some things that I've written over the past year that aren't posted yet, so maybe I do have a solution, though I still don't like it.
O.K., so, here's the scenario I've gone through which has caused me so much distress: let's say I have some sort of interaction with somebody during the course of a day, and think of something I want to say, but can't bring myself to say it to them in person right then. Instead, I write it on-line, which I think is a good thing to do. But then they read it that night and I have to see them the next day. Whether they say something about what I've written or not, I'm still aware of the fact that they may have read it, and that changes my perspective on what they may be thinking. I used to think I wouldn't care about that awareness, but it turns out I do, and the real problem is that it bothers me that I would be affected by this possibility. It all just sounds quite silly to me, now that I write it out.
So, one possible solution I've come to for dealing with this problem is to do what I've kinda already done. As I said, there are things I've written over the past year that I never got around to posting -- for one reason or another, and not all for the above-mentioned reason -- but if I post them after-the-fact, there's a much smaller chance of someone reading them right away, and therefore I can't really worry myself about it. So I can continue this pattern, of just posting things weeks or months after I've written them, as a way of protecting myself or something. It still doesn't really address the issue, of course, and this compromise will still nag at me until I find a better answer, but at least it will keep me from just not posting anything at all, which I feel is a greater mistake.
The end result of all this is that, if you care, you can expect to find things mysteriously inserted in places that you think you've already read, and I do apologize for that. They'll always be individual entries rather than additions to already-posted entries, but I'd be confused by this if I were the one reading the journal. If I were reading someone's journal, I'd systematically go back through the entries -- in order -- to guarantee to myself that I read them all, even if the reality is that I would possibly never read them all and would most likely miss some good ones while taking the time to read the bad ones just because they were in order. It's silly of me and I admit it, but it's how I've always been with anything, and with those things I've completed by this method, I've been very pleased with the final result, even if it took me two or three times as long as it needed to. It's not that my methods are inefficient, but that they're more thorough than is probably necessary. Anyway, so, if I were reading my journal and found out that entries would be materializing in the past, in groups I'd already determined I'd completed reading, I'd be a little frustrated. But if I were warned that this would happen, I would just start writing down which ones I'd read, and somehow determine not to lose that list. For most of you, this will probably be unnecessary and actually sound like an absurd suggestion, and I kinda agree with you, but I feel compelled to make it, so, since I've already typed it, I won't delete it.
Oh, yeah, one more thing. I know I just wrote about not liking how I've reacted to hearing that people have been reading here (even if what they've been saying has been good), and reading this would therefore naturally incline some people to pretend they haven't been reading. I guess that would be an inevitable outcome to what I'd just written, but I don't want it to happen. The basis of everything I've written -- today included -- is that honesty reigns above all, so if I thought people were starting to withhold the truth for fear that my reaction to their reaction would be negative, that would bother me worse than anything. So I'm suggesting you don't withhold the truth, even if that seems to be the logical conclusion to what you've just read.
My God, brains are complex organs.
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