first-and-a-half entry
(the unabridged version)
it's my blog and i can post the unhinged rambling version if i want to
- - -
for the first time since i got this domain i created a new subdirectory in the root folder, and it's frankly kind of surreal. i'm doing it, i'm committing to longform - check it out, we've even got lowercase letters! this is gonna be my repository for text stuff on the internet going forward.
there are a lot more things that i know and understand now compared to the last time i tried keeping a public journal, but it's still hard to not feel overcome with doubt and confusion over such a silly and relatively trivial thing. everything feels like it's already been said by somebody else - or at least said in a better way. i have a bad habit of assuming things i created or experienced can't be useful to others, and not sharing them as a result.
on the other hand, there's a didactic, fourth-wall-breaking tone that's overtaken practically every form of expression produced in the past 10 or so years, where everything from journaling to dating sims to fanfiction has to be edutainment or wholesome in some way - because everybody is always watching - and things feel kind of awkwardly self-aware as a result. when my brain can taste this film that coats and strangles all psychic material it's revolting, and it feels especially jarring when people are just writing in their fucking blog or something. being useless was bad enough, but whatever this is it's somehow worse.
at one point in time, i was so skeeved out by this that i thought the act of sharing myself or anything i did was "wasteful" because it was "performative". anything i made would be retroactively rendered nothing more than a show put on for the sake of others. too often, the fact that other people exist at all is a noxious, invasive force in my mind. paradoxically, i was still burdened with a sense that i was somehow using my time less effectively if produced words or music rather than art specifically, because the instant gratification of a picture would make people happier, at least in the moment. if i couldn't make the world better in some way, what was the point of being born in the first place? i spent the vast majority of my fanarting years funneling my energy into what i felt was the least consumable and most explicit art possible, so as to hopefully weed out the weak and keep their eyes and paws off my shit. simultaneously i was frantically trying to proselytize, in true fujoshi style, the concepts and greater narrative i was divining in the undertow of other people's stories; both to those around me and to my cellular reincarnations that manifest every 7 years.
somehow these conflicting beliefs and feelings were all completely real to me at the same time. as each layer upon stupid contradictory layer of internal conflict accumulated, i was increasingly desperate to live in a world where people's experiences are their own. i wanted to pretend within the confines of my own universe that the fundamental phenomenon of people simply doing things because it's pleasurable was not going extinct. sometimes i still wonder if there's anybody out there who is actually awake or alive, because when you follow the turtles all the way down it's impossible that there is actually any such thing as free will. anyway, despite shooting my creative process in the foot for so long i don't regret what i created or how i spent my time - i genuinely like the non-consumable product of my reverent worship, and i like the feeling that i'm helping to fulfill even one more person's needs - but all the same, i'm ready to branch out from this mental space i'd pigeonholed myself into.
as a couple friends gave their answers on the topic of why we create things, not in the broad ontological sense but as individuals, i realized that for me it is a pure form of diarying: a delineation of metaphysics that tick away unseen if i don't describe them. i'd like to know which trees are falling and have fallen in my forest, and what creatures reside in the neighboring ones. it helps me figure out what the point of having felt or experienced anything ever was. my mission statement is still more or less the same, with a slight twist: i want to allow myself to practice a new modality of logging experiences that i have had that might be both useful yet non-didactic purely by the fact that i have drawn the curtain on a natural process. so, i think it's worthwhile to keep learning how to identify which channels of expression enable me to exist most genuinely, yet with a sense of fulfillment about describing an unusual, interesting, or familiar reflection of experience. even when making things only for myself, i would like them to be useful to myself, and to be able to explain my inner world and my life to my future self without pretense or scruples.
over the past few years i've made lots of new connections both internally and externally, and when i reflect on where i am now i can't help but feel overcome with gratitude. i'd like to continue on this path wherever it takes me. i'm keeping my and others' ecosystems fresh; it feels right. one of these connections includes keeping a diary not attached to a social media account for the first time in, oh, probably decades. it's very difficult for me to both learn and keep good habits, but by now i find myself thoroughly tired of social media and simply find the process of using my diary and working on my site more comfortable and natural. it was one of the things that really helped my brain unclench from that paradoxical headspace which combined the feeling of having to perform to the standard of always being watched, yet also feeling consumed whenever i'm not utterly non-consumable - in retrospect, the latter is just the former in disguise.
i feel like i can't write something coherent or succinct to save my life, but getting to the point isn't really the point. after all, not everything has to be a teaching moment even if i learned from it, and i feel very comfortable with my cozy little space online. it's a good set and setting to try something new. i can be private first, public second-if-at-all, and not the other way around. i don't have to do it, but i want to do it, purely because i think it will be fun and fulfilling. it will also help me hold myself to documenting things better - thus aligning with the aforementioned mission statement of being as selfish and beneficial as possible.
with all that in mind, if you stopped by to read this, thank you for spending your time with my thoughts. i feel that you're sharing yourself - your life's time and energy - with me as much as i am with you. i'm grateful our paths could cross, even if only for a moment.
.8190
