Exercising Demons Part 1 🏃♂️
To fully begin I want to address my experience with blogs in the past. Mainly focusing on why did I stop writing, what was the platform and the experience like, and maybe how this time will be different.
I actually remember starting a blog in junior year of high school. This was on the platform Live Journal, which to my surprise, is still around and my old blog exists in its entirety, sans images. Reading through all those entries it was obvious I was grasping at what is the internet and what is socializing on the internet? This was proto facebook era, mypsace was just a year old. What I remember was as kid who kept a journal, seeing other people share so freely their inner world and thoughts online was aspiring.
Enter the double-slit experiment:
Yet... something was different... it was clear that I was no longer writing for myself I was writing for an audience. A hypothetical perceived audience. One I desperately wanted to have. To the point I could sense myself falling into the trap of writing in the hopes of getting attention. I had trouble discerning what was truly myself and what I wanted myself to be based on the perceived interests and engagement I received from others.
This was about the time I was coming to terms with what social media was, a ceaseless observer / observee, a camera that's always recording, an absence of reality in something that seems so close to it. The paradoxical question that formed that I still dwell on is How do you socially interact virtually without it being performative?
The slippery slope is when I begin to self censor, or when the room of perceived audience members start interjecting or criticizing the words as they come out of my head.
So how has this changed since I was in high school? I think the main difference is I'm not trying to impress anyone or prove myself. I'm wanting to explore my thoughts and share them. I'm not afraid of the perceived permanence of a blog post. In this moment, I'm willing to make mistakes and to learn from them.