The Perils of Self Reflection
and also writing about it on a public platform.
Or, what in the great googlie mooglies was I thinking.
I should probably start by doing the obligatory where has that dragon guy been. The simple answer is nowhere. I have been simply and perfectly hiding. It is an easy thing to do I suppose, when you have all the feelings roiling around. You find yourself laying in bed, or sitting in your computer chair wanting to be anywhere but a place where the feelings surface. Instead of logging in to your website, you double click the Fallout logo. You turn on the baseball game. You distract distract distract, until it becomes a thing.
Somewhere along the continuum of depression and avoidance you reach the point when you realize it has been too long, and that becomes a thing. This is sort of like what happens when you have a friend that fades a little bit and you start to worry that maybe it is a thing now. Maybe you aren’t friends anymore, maybe you just have nothing left in common. Of course, this is rarely the case of true friends. Time and distance are almost theoretical in those circumstances, a figment of the mind that melts away when you reunite. Can the same be said for writing? For interneting? For trying to do a thing like this?
So yeah, I have been avoiding being me on the internet. Rather than creating my own content, I have been consuming the work of others at a mad pace. When someone like me puts so much of what he is in to his own creations it becomes safe to ingest other’s ramblings and positions and pictures and stories. It works on the principle of this song.
My last post was in a nutshell the most personal thing I could have written. It was a dark journey in to the heart of one of the things that haunts my nights and threatens me from the shadows of the day. As such, it drew out a surprising amount of emotions that I had really thought were dealt with and buried. Clearly, the evidence shows this is not the case.
Every pseudo intellectual piece of author advice you have ever heard probably included something about making sure that you put a little piece of yourself in to that which you write. I seem to have taken that to a level that almost concerns me about being narcissistic in my ramblings. I take solace in the fact that most of the time I am trying to relate some kind of advice or world weary philosophy that might in some small way, change the reader’s thinking, even if it is only to add an extra voice to that which they already thought. Of course, isn’t that the most narcissistic thought one can have? I don’t want much, I just want to influence every other person in to thinking a bit more like me? In the end, that’s not exactly what I meant. I was more going for a, if my thoughts can get someone else thinking, whether it is the thought or the story, than hey, I have some value after all. Is that not what many if not most people aspire to? To have had some value in this world to other people?
I cannot dazzle with my running skills. I cannot swat dingers. I cannot split the atom. I cannot do complex mathematical equations in my head. I cannot a lot of things.
This I suppose is why I write, and why I often write about things that are so close to my heart. I like to think I am good at it, or at least better than average at forming random words in to a pattern that makes some semblance of sense. Fuck punctuation though. That shit is stupid. Also, spelling in english is a little dumB.
In the last few months I have been examining that which rocks my boat, and I have come to the conclusion that creativity in many forms is my kink. This is why I am crawling back to this site. I don’t want fame. I don’t want riches, I just want a place to share my creativity.
Here’s my updated plan:
- Share more fiction. Some for free and some for pay. Just enough to recoup my expenses though.
- Share others stories in the non-fiction. Write about experiences from their perspective or with their thoughts in mind.
- Direct non-fiction towards current events and thoughts. While this might be dangerous in today’s political environment, I firmly believe that if your ideas are too dangerous to offer upo for public scrutiny, than they are in fact bad ideas that cannot be held as reflecting reality.
- Showcase the work of others through reviews and linking to what I have consumed and how it has impacted me, for good or ill.
- Get my world building for geeks back on track.
- Tell some jokes.
- Make as many lists as possible.
- Randomly insert important
- Be active in engaging communities that I may want to be involved with on here and on other platforms. I am going to start with twitter I guess.
Anyway, the point is, I am back and I am not going to let nightmares, figments, feelings and anxieties interfere with being me all over the internet and whatnot. So often we have to put on masks or costumes in our daily lives in order to fit in or to get by. In the very least, I should have remembered that this platform was and is a place where I should not fear to be me.
I invite anyone who reads this to also feel free to be themselves on this platform.
Note: I have edited twice. Any mistakes at this point are likely intentional for the lulz. Remember, sometimes I am subtle.