Geese gotta fly
Sep. 30th, 2002 05:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gurdonarkWhen I walked last night at our local "man-made lake with a sidewalk around it" town park, one town over, I felt at home, in the way that I always feel at home at a few local places I frequently visit. I saw a flock of geese, just a few feet above the water, flying in formation, looking just *so right* as they transited the small lakeway. I walked under trees intermittently shading the trail, creating that dappled light effect. The changing of the seasons appeals to me, that feeling that things move on, improve, worsen, correct, defy correction. I like that sense that things are happening, and that the cycles are moving.
I've spent a few weeks just keeping the proverbial jeep out of the metaphoric work potholes. The worst seems to be over now, and things besides work seem to also be coming into focus. But as the seasons move on, I feel the need to make sea changes myself. I see myself as caught in a few ruts. Most of them are comfortable ruts, that I would not change for love or money. A few, though, are ruts I no longer wish to inhabit. I have seen their contours, and they get boring after a while.
I posited some months ago how every journal features only so many "themes". The "themes" of my own journal lately seem to repeat over and over. That's okay--this journal is "really" an exercise for me rather than a real "media resource" for my readers. The interactions are just an appealing bonus. But I want to begin using the journal again for some of the self-monitoring things for which I think a journal can be ideal fodder. I've begun doing more creative writing since I've been doing a journal, and I want to resume that groove. I've always been intrigued by the way the Puritans, who believed that salvation came only to the Elect, nonetheless journaled like mad, seemingly to prove to themselves they had been "elected". I love, and sometimes practice, the idea of using a written record to make sure I am actually doing what in theory I wish to do. I went to this cool seminar once, off-putting in just the right way, and yet somehow inspiring, about how to use a Franklin DayPlanner, of all things, as a life's mission handbook. I practiced that for months, finally stopped pencilling it in, but I loved that idea of journal-as-mission-statement. I want to begin using my weblog journal once more as a similar divining rod. Of course, this raises the age old water wizard question: am I hitting water, really, or am I just wandering the field with a crooked stick?
I have, since I came to understand the concept of a "friends list", generally felt that the whole "friends list" thing was a cool software convenience, but not something that really "mattered" on an interpersonal level. I guess I reached that conclusion because I have always followed a few journals that I never add to my "friends" list, and I have yet to use the "friends only" feature of my own journal. Thus, I refer to the "friends list" as a software convenience rather than an emotional thing--people write to me about my journal once in a great while who are not even on LJ, and I read journals frequently about which I never comment. Even among my friends' list journals, I read almost every one, but sometimes neglect to comment because I just have so little to say. I don't usually add or drop as "commentary" on a journal, even when I am disquieted or intrigued by its comment, although sometimes I'll ask if I can add one I like. In the past, when people have dropped me, I just assumed that they did not want to see mine pop up on their list, and that's cool. "I'm an acquired taste"
is the way I see myself, and I don't mind if someone loses the taste to fiddle with my over-eager and over-pretentious posting. I also don't mind that a few folks on my friends' list don't really wade through all the junk in my journal, but we keep each other as friends because it's nice to post a comment here or there once in a while. I love my former friend
appledumpling, who consistently alternated between here and a Deadjournal weblog, and then promptly deleted her Live Journal soon after pronouncing that she had realized it was the only journal for her after all. I find a delicious and appealing consistency in utterly inexplicable and irrelevant inconsistency.In this context, I am intrigued that it matters to me, just a little, that in the last 6 weeks, I've been dropped by three folks. My feelings aren't really hurt, so to speak, because in 2 instances the deletions made complete sense to me. Two journals are people who are entirely dissimilar to me, and whose journals had taken turns in which I found it hard to comment, because in each case the journalist had taken radical turns into places about which I had very little to comment upon. I love that many of my LJ friends are so exotic to my suburban ways, what with living in different places and living very different lives. So I don't mind, and actually enjoy it, if someone is just A to Z different than I am. But when people are aggressively negative in certain ways, which it would be too much trouble to spell out here, I just can't relate, and any comment I made might seem somehow less than fully appreciative of the journalist's points. I don't delete such journalists from my friends' list, but I follow my grandmother's precept about saying nice things or no things in such instances. With journals with which I can relate, but I just disagree, of course, I try to respectfully put forward my position to the contrary, perhaps to an extent that might be almost pedantic :). Of course, a few journals I love to read each day I never comment upon, which might be poor manners, but I just love the flow, I don't really have anything to say.
As to the two folks who "just" dropped me, both were people whose journals I had not commented much on lately, and who had not commented on mine in a long while. I completely "got" the reason that I was no longer worth keeping on their friends list. As to the third recent one, it was a bit more complex, and I was actually dropped one day after a comment from that person who much they enjoyed reading my journal. I searched for some faux pas I had committed, but did not see it. I reluctantly had to conclude that I was completely clueless on the issue--not that cluelessness on interpersonal matters is strange ground to me.
The point I'm making here is not "ohmygosh, I've been dropped", because, really, anyone should be able to add or drop as they please. I can think offhand of 3 journals I really like that I don't have any plans to add, because I think it's kind of fun to read them sporadically. I can think of 1 journal I used to read pretty often, without any thought of adding, because a comment I made once got a rather frosty response, leaving me more comfortable as a silent reader than a vocal one. That journalist, by the way, just posted a melodramatic post about "moving on" but leaving the journal as some fossil record, to be savored by friends left behind. I have dropped one or two journals, usually "second" journals or communities which considered material I found objectionable on one basis or another--it doesn't really matter why, as my definitions of "objectionable" would differ from others'.
I have been dropped by folks whose reasons for dropping me made perfect sense, and, really, what would it matter if it didn't make sense? LiveJournal friends' lists should not be some personal approval rating. Indeed, I rather like my persistent insightful anonymous poster, because although the insight the poster has suggests to me that the poster may even be a friend of mine who prefers anonymity, I am cool if that person is an entire stranger, and I sure don't mind if I never know just who reads and why.
But for all the "shoulds" and "oughts" and "haves" and "have nots" and "oh, yes" and "oh, no" of this post, I am left with the fundamental fact that this whole issue of friends' list is important enough for me to write this whole post about it. I think about the interaction with friends list friends and with others. I worry a bit if my comment was callous, and revel a bit if an exchange indicates connection. That's all cool, more or less--surely it's part of the LJ experience. But I get wary of the importance I attach to things. I wonder sometimes if I should be more mindful, and thus, seemingly paradoxically, mind less about such things.
It is curious, though, that LJ now seems an important feature of my life. Eight months ago, I barely understood the weblog concept, although message boards could serve some similar functions. I now feel connected to people I may never meet. I now feel aware of things I never thought about before I signed onto LJ. Sometimes it matters enough to me that I want to use LJ as a device to transform my whole life--a giant DayPlanner of the soul. Sometimes it matters enough I want to delete LJ. I don't write this post to make some bold pronouncement. But I notice that this particular goose now seems to have to fly on LJ, and what an odd thing this weblogging has proven to be :).
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2002-09-30 05:59 pm (UTC)And I agree with you about feeling connections to people never "really" met. It fascinates me, this ability of ours to make connections over something so impersonal as a computer screen. How can this be, and yet so many of us have trouble getting to know our next-door neighbors?
no subject
Date: 2002-09-30 06:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-09-30 06:40 pm (UTC)If I find a journal I love, often I'll read it for months before quietly adding it to my list. I don't expect to be added back, but I'm always really pleased when they do. I don't automatically add people who add me (I like to choose what I read), but then I feel guilty that I haven't. I feel a vague pang when people delete me, and disappointment when it's someone I enjoyed reading, because my subconscious wonders why they didn't enjoy my journal. Plus my overly curious mind wonders what's happening in their friends-only posts.
It's all a bit political really! At least I've never been involved in one of those friends-list wars I've observed in other people's journals.
no subject
Date: 2002-09-30 06:54 pm (UTC)I haven't sorted out at all how I feel and think about this, and hence this post :)
I wonder sometimes if I'll ever have a friends-only post. Rest assured, if I do, you'll get to see it.
no subject
Date: 2002-09-30 07:19 pm (UTC)There are two people who became abusive toward me, and who I've banned from ever commenting in my journal. (That felt good)
It surprised me how many people who I cut from my friends list, kept me on their friend's list. I guess they LIKE me-- they REALLY LIKE ME!
no subject
Date: 2002-09-30 07:32 pm (UTC)I think your friends list story really makes the point as well or better as my post.
In the same vein, nervousness.org's server apparently just closed the site. Imagine an entire Eternal Network unplugged like a power cord! Virtual is odd!
Re:
Date: 2002-10-01 04:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-10-01 04:47 am (UTC)We'll see if it gets a new life, or if nervousness has ebbed into silence.
no subject
Date: 2002-09-30 07:45 pm (UTC)i've tried to understand many times the nature of my friends' list. often i'm puzzled by the lack of feedback, but i've already discussed this topic, you know. in the end it makes perfect sense that people, when i directly provoked them, reacted along the lines of "oh, i read you constantly but often i don't know what to say... it's just beautiful." okay, thank you and whatnot, i think. but the most puzzling LJers to me remain those who come out of the blue, add me, and never say a word, sometimes they don't even reply to my comments in their journals. or those with whom there's an initial interaction (at times even a conversation or two via AIM) and then i find myself dropped from their list. i, too, check for a possible faux pas from my side. but nothing went really wrong. well, i find these two sampled behaviours quite odd.
mysteries of livejournal. but i do enjoy the experience.
best,
Rick
no subject
Date: 2002-10-01 04:16 am (UTC)Your journal has a literary quality to it, of course, which may explain why you draw a fair number of folks who are readers qua readers instead of readers who comment. You write well, also, which also is apt to draw readers who read rather than comment.
I think that's a good thing, to the extent it has a value.
But it must be curious to speak "into a void of friends".
Both the sampled behaviors are quite odd, but the whole experience is much like I found living in California--wonderful place, but there is still some sense that everyone is making up the rules as they go on, with amusing and provocative results.
I do know that although I try to ignore things like friends' list deletions, it interested me enough to post about, so it must matter in some ways :)
no subject
Date: 2002-09-30 08:23 pm (UTC)i have always been wary of social rubricks...didnt you talk about those r things recently?
i read what i want to, leave a note here and there but i sure like being free
actually, when i first started visiting yr lj i was surprised how many comments you were getting...i thought i was seeing double. my favorite lj--now sadly on hiatus-- never got more than a couple a week
dont worry about yr fickle readership or nonreadership...what matters is writing what you live and think
Friends, Strangers, LiveJournallers!
The very first friend I added (after the guy who showed me LiveJournal - he's going to be responsible for a hell of a lot, let me tell you!) was a journaller whose post in a community I stumbled across in my first scan of what my list of interests brought up. Her comment intrigued me, her Journal proved a veritable showcase, and a link to such interesting peeps as yourself. Knowing my boyfriend's newfound propensity for deleting the sites-visited history (he thinks this keeps me ignorant of the fact he visits porn sites, whilst what it really does is peeve me greatly when I can't find a most excellent site I didn't bookmark first time I visited) I Added her. I had misgivings, as no, I didn't read the users' guide first, and was unsure of the etiquette involved in the whole adding thang.
I have to say, I felt welcomed and accepted when she responded to my action by posting a really positive and encouraging comment to my first LJ entry. Yes, I felt that 'connection' we all type of, however tremulous. So here I am, doing it again! Discourage me if you see fit.
And I know I'm not alone in having a bit of grin at the whole Adding-a-Friend-who's-in-a-quandary-about-the-whole-Friends-thing picture : ) Hell, give me some time (I am chronically chronometrically-challenged) and I might go ahead and Add all the peeps who commented on your post! Geese tend to fly in flocks, after all. And if anyone has a problem with this, all you need to do is tell me. Until then, my right brain will continue to argue with my left brain over the question you so elegantly posed, Robert: Is this the way I'll quench my thirst, or is hanging out in this bar simply dehydrating me further?
Cheers!
Re: Friends, Strangers, LiveJournallers!
Date: 2002-10-01 04:25 am (UTC)I'm pretty sure that this is all water, and not some dehydrating chemical, but I'm also tentatively thinking that the real wells are in real life, and that this is just a taste. I remember when the first person "added" me as a friend. I felt so privileged (particularly when that person writes so well, and seemed/seems so much cooler than I am :) ). I also remember how flattered I felt when the first person wrote me an e mail asking if they could add.
I kinda feel like
I'm glad you commented. My left brain, my right brain and my autonomous system engage in debates just as you describe on an hourly basis.
P.S.
Date: 2002-10-05 05:46 am (UTC)p.p.s.
Re: p.p.s.
Date: 2002-10-05 06:11 am (UTC)Re: p.p.s.
Date: 2002-10-05 07:01 am (UTC)Oh, my goodness, we're both laid low by the postal service!
Not to worry, you'll have a journal full of friends. If you're short of interesting people to read, just read and comment to some of mine. They're all pretty much gems.
no subject
Date: 2002-10-01 04:20 am (UTC)I do try to practice the social exercise of commenting far more times than the comments I receive, but I also miss the heady early month or two of LJ when I would go through hundreds of journals to find those that interested me.
I completely get that you like the independence. If you ever decide you want a code to set up one, let me know. Even if you
don't want to keep a journal, an ID lets you easily get e mails about replies,which can be nice. But I have to admit your simple elusiveness is kinda cool, at least as far as weblog stuff goes :).
just briefly...
Date: 2002-10-01 12:59 am (UTC)i added you/started reading your journal because your comments in rick's journal were kind and thoughtful, and showed a true care and concern. i've connected greatly with almost everything you write. Sometimes it matters enough to me that I want to use LJ as a device to transform my whole life--a giant DayPlanner of the soul. well said. LJ is a large part of my life right now. being online in this way is kind of a group therapy (maybe as disfunctional as bob newhart group, but still it serves a need.) earlier this month i was despairing and felt abandoned by rick during his hiatus/deep work mode, but i moved past it and connected better with other people. it has been enjoyable, and i think of it now as a little kaffee klatsch that i visit every day. lately when i've been away from my desk i've been thinking fondly of things written by you or sally or catherine, etc.... and oh yes, i like that at least you identify yourself by a nonpretentious first name (which, as it happens, has rich personal associations with it --- my longshoreman grandather and one of my current dogs). this is a babbling way of saying that most fellow journalists, when sufficient time is spent in communicating with each other, seem/become/are real. but it does take time, and if spent wisely, the resulting quality of people in one's circle or groups beats quantity. oh, this weekend i was "dropped" by one of the LJ-ers i recently met in person. she said she just needed to scale back her field of vision or busy-ness for the right now. but we are probably going out to dinner soon. the prospect of meeting sally and the act of having put my hands on the door handle of the bookmobile sometimes visited by
really tired, not "crafting" what i want to say very well. i hope you understand that i am just reflecting on the fly and sending postive thoughts, not trying to give a moral to the story. i have a poem to share later that seems appropriate.
kind regards,
laurie
Re: just briefly...
Date: 2002-10-01 04:29 am (UTC)I think that it's very important to me that my weblog reflect a "real person" rather than someone unduly interesting or high-falutin'. I'm glad that sometimes it comes off that way.
I think that "reflecting on the fly", as you've done, often is as close as one can come to a true 'moral' to the story.
I'll look foward to reading your poem. Oh, and I never told you that Metropolis out-take is really cool. Although on paper I understand the contoversy about colorization, she really gains something from having pigment, doesn't she?
};-)=
Date: 2002-10-01 04:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-10-23 11:06 pm (UTC)