2024-10-06
I could be a young, emotional teen eternally trapped in the body of an older man, for I've been this way since my my late teenage years and all the way into my early twenties where I am now, and I imagine I still will be well into my thirties, or fourties...
@@[I'm not the man you think I am.][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGl7g_a5YLA] I'm listening to The Smiths years later than I really should. Sorrow's native son, etc.
So, it gets me to thinking, am I the man you think I am? Will I ever be the man you think I am? Or rather, will the man you think I am ever be the man I am?
On the blog, there is potentially the chance for me to be fairly honest, and give a good amount of detail about my life and who I am as to be genuine, but I cannot write everything down, and inevitably there will be aspects of my life that have to be filled in by a prospective reader, even just because I am too wordy and write more than can really be read. I don't expect anyone to read the hundred thousand words I've written so far, but really instead maybe just to dip in and out as they are bored, if anything, if I even have readership at all. And can you separate the metaphor, or the words that are only chosen by a particular emotion? Can you discern the self that is not represented, representable, desiring to be represented, in words: the self when the self does not desire to describe itself?
I wonder then, is there anybody on this planet I am altogether honest with? Certainly, and perhaps by necessity, myself. I am (with some censorship) true to myself on this blog and in these wordvomits, and so potentially in that way have a degree of honesty. I am not honest with my family: there is a certain intimacy with them, that comes from being family, and them being very upclose able to see my faults, myriad as they are, but also I do try to converse with them in a certain way, and wonder if the mode of conversation I adopt with my family is entirely true to myself. I don't go out of my way to lie, nor do I feel particularly as if I act to deceive them, yet I do certainly hide certain aspects of myself at particular times (I think that holds true for everyone)
In a way too, I am different from person to person. Not as if I am totally different, but in a sense that I constrain aspects of myself to those with are easily conversible with a particular person, or say things I know will be funny to the person (perhaps because of their knowledge). For instance, if I know person X likes T, I may joke about T, but not do so to person Y, as only X likes T not Y (Y may not even know what X is), where Y make like, say, U instead (and I will talk about U with them). In that sense, it is say similar to if one had reading friends and you talk about reading and books with them, but do not go into that detail with another person who has no interest in reading. Is that being true to oneself? Or, potentially slightly different, what of joking in a manner than suits a particular person? For instance, not being quite so sarcastic around someone who doesn't understand it well. Hmm.
Now, in terms of being honest to oneself, there is potentially that I am just misunderstanding it, and really it refers to not putting yourself in an unpleasant situation for a prolonged period of time, or keeping a friendship alive when it would naturally dwindle for some other reason. As in, there is that kind of natural reaction "I'm uncomfortable around this person", or "We aren't really getting on". I have the problem that (owing due to a personal fault) I occasionally can't disinhibit around someone, and so the conversation sort of dissipates by way of my lack of conversation. Of course, that gets counted as "not being myself", though to be inhibited comes naturally to me. It feels a bit arbitrary as advice, really. Here's a youth trying to figure out what's really meant by that: did I ever take it seriously?
I am pretty content at the present that I am writing so much (thousands of words) and have nobody who reads them. I feel as if this in some way lifts a weight from my shoulders: in fact, I don't have an RSS feed yet, and so it is highly unlikely that anyone who comes onto my site will actually continue to read anything I write, because the effort of typing in the URL is too great. For as long as I don't have an RSS feed, I can sort of get away with this; of course, sooner or later I will add one, and then I might have to contend with people really reading what I write...
The thing is, I also am avoiding interpersonal interaction on the internet in the fear that people might read what I write, which certainly is embarrassing, but I suppose is... good. I think it is sort of the fear that teenage boys (and oh, myself) have before girls, that in some way there is something to be lost by interaction, or by judgement, or by being seen by others... Of course also, I think it probably *is* what I want from my time on the internet, and doing this IndieWeb, personal web, thing. After all, the point is to interact with others! I read others' blogs and don't seem to really think about it in any untoward way, though it does seem to have more substance than just "content": it prompts me to think, and I enjoy to read about others' lives and thoughts. Each has their own perspective, sometimes very defined to the extent that I can pen them as "the X one" in my head, almost stereotype them by their own actions.
This comes up in my mind as I've read the blog post by Lou Plummer about @@[reaching out][https://louplummer.lol/an-appreciation-challenge-spread-the-love/] and showing appreciation for the writing that others do, and to show that they are read, and appreciated. I do want to, but I suppose the fear is... I don't want to reach out and do that. I want to stay in the shadows. I suppose this intermediate state of being both in the public and not seen is too nice; perhaps that's what's nice about the city. But isn't a rural life nice too?
(As an aside, the metaphor of the IndieWeb as a rural village parish, and the mainstream web as the urban city has too many parallels...)
Have a good one.