caddyman | (no subject)

Loon that I am, I have another character sheet to write. Will the boy never learn? It seems not. Ah well, a little lolloping around for me, and then back to the keyboard.

So today is the day after the solstice. Nights are drawing in, now. Soon be winter. The day is what, 90 seconds shorter than yesterday, and tomorrow it will be a certifiable 3 minutes. My my. Start laying in the provisions now, kids.

ashenkat has just written a long entry on how she sees Live Journal, and has quite evidently put a great deal of thought into it; what LJ means, the reader's and writer's responsibility (or lack thereof), and whether people are obliged to read everything their friends write. It's an interesting perspective, but not, I think one I share (though no less valid for that, of course).

I know why I write in LJ. I always wanted to keep a diary or journal, but frankly couldn't be bothered in the days of pen and ink and little books with brass buckles. Writing with a pen is dismally boring, and I have great respect and admiration for people who use one for more than a signature or cheque.

Why do I write?

I write for me.

I write because I like to write.

I am vaguely flattered that some people like to read my musings (and sometimes irrationally bothered as to why someone should 'de-friend' me when Ireally don't know that person from Adam as a physical entity). Beyond that, however, I write for myself primarily and if my friends are peering over my shoulder as I write, then welcome you are, too. That's fine: I Peer over yours, though not all the time. I can't pretend to read everything my friends write - although I read some of you more than others, and I do read everyone some of the time. Just not all of the time. I doubt anyone reads everything I write. I certainly don't. I just pin my demons to the page where they lose a lot (not all) of their power. If I write something not for public consumption, I rarely write it here, or if I do, I decide who has access. (Generally I mark stuff private when it's about people at work. Heh.)

Why do you write?

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I write because I like writing, but I like keeping in touch with people I don't see. Various peeps, who I only contact through LJ when not LRPing, make comments on events in my life and we have more to talk about. I'm addicted - so what?

Same as you, really. I write because I like to write. Time was, I wrote marketing stuff, news releases and brochures etc, for a living, and needed no other outlet. Now with the vast expansion of communications (more means worse?), copywriters are at a bit of a discount and I've found other ways to make a crust. But I still enjoy a scribble, and LJ's a convenient place to do it.

I also enjoy reading others' scribbles, and LJ provides plenty of well written stuff on topics of interest, more than can be said of the so-called quality newspapers these days. On which note, the stimulus to join LJ came from my dear daughter

huskyteer whose outlet of choice it is (until she lands a lucrative publishing deal).

Not a very sociable chap, I haven't many friends or Friends – just the stars, eh? If my posts were private then it wouldn't make much difference to the world. But I believe open-ness to peer review to be important in maintaining quality.

I think I'm just about entirely with you on this one, although I would add something about the ever contentious subject of friends lists.

My friends list is not by any stretch of anyone's imagination a political statement, and anyone construing it to be so should put him/hersself right immedaitely. There are journals I read fairly regularly where the writer is not on my friends list, and there are a couple of people on my friends list who I tend to skim through (you are not one of those). Similarly, I have several levels of security going on, one of which is a "close friends" list, which has very few people on. I have also been known to make private posts. When posting, I ask myself who I am happy seeing said post, and modify the security accordingly. I would imagine many people do the same.

However, the two things that everyone on my friends list does have in common is that they are someone who I know I would be comfortable going for a quiet beer with on a one-to-one basis, and someone who I am interested in knowing more about. It is not a popularity contest, it is not a bid to get to know random people overseas, and it is not a public statement of who I consider socially acceptable. I have no qualms if someone is not on my friends list but I am not on theirs, and I certainly don't put someone on my own friends list just because he or she has friended me.

Bollocks to politics. Taking the ostrich approach and burying my head in the sand most of the time is well worth the kick in the arse I occasionally get for not looking.

I think, when I embarked upon my LJ career I imagined it would be quite different from what it is. I didn't think people would use it for tremendously personally stuff becuase, well it's the internet, which is an intrinsically dirty and shallow thing in my opinion. I thought it would be a good way to keep in touch with stuff people were doing (going out, having a party, etc) which it is. I also thought primarily it would be a place for robust debate. I suppose I imagined this because of my experience of message boards in the past. Well, it isn't that. It is, at times, a painfully clinical place. Everyone seems constantly worried about offending each other, and I think that whilst with face-to-face interaction you have the possibility of retraction, softening of tone, etc, face-to-face interaction also requires a certain level of robustness of friendship if it is ever going to move beyond small talk.

But I think - unlike many - I actually enjoy the fact that the internet gives people the freedom to be rude, opinionated and obnoxious. It can also give them the space and time to think through their opinion and explain it out in a decent way. But it can work both ways. The internet has also put me in touch with a whole bevy of morons I would have cheerfully not known existed on our happy little planet. I suppose that's democracy for you.

So, in short, I am mostly disappointed with LJ as a medium. I'm going to keep using it as a way to keep in touch because I live miles from most people, but I'm thinking of starting to use mine in a different way, for writing informal essays and such about things I am interested in.

"I always wanted to keep a diary or journal, but frankly couldn't be bothered in the days of pen and ink and little books with brass buckles."

I have to go with that one - wanted to keep a journal/diary of some sort, but never got around to buying one and keeping up with it. Though the one time I did start writing bilge in a book, some bugger stole it. Natch.

I write because, like many, I want to.

I made a pact with myself that I would be as honest as i could be when writing - and try to stick to it - through the black clouds and the blue skies. I freely admit to using LJ as a vomit bag for my thoughts and feelings and truly offer no apologies for such, and find it pretty useful to go back over what I have written some time later, and receive the odd kick from others, both of which I find help me build up a better picture of 'me' to me.

I don't think i've made use of the "private" setting thus far - not that it doesn't have it's obvious uses. Have typed out a couple of replies to friends posts, and deleted before sending due to realising that the humour i was trying to put forth could be misinterpreted as an attack - the main thing I dislike about the medium of text is it's ability to have intentions misinterpreted.

I don't always read every little thing my 'lj buddies' write, and feel no guilt for not doing so.

My friends list consists of people I know / know of, or stumbled across and enjoyed their writing style. I find it allows me to 'touch base' with people I see less regularly than I would like, and makes the world a little smaller, which can't be a bad thing.

Is the contents of someone's LJ, or other internet based comunication a truly accurate representation of that person? Unlikely. In most cases I have no doubt that you are merely meeting their 'representative', or that which they feel comfortable in revealing. Kinda like meeting a room full of new people - you don't introduce yourself, you introduce your reperesentative, just as you meet their representatives :)

My LJ serves two purposes for me.

One is to keep a general level of contact with people (such as yourself who for various reasons I don't see all that often. I don't think that this is an illusory contact - we have a vague idea of what's going on in each other's lives, so that when we do see each other, we can have a conevrsation which isn't entirely based around "What have you been up to?" "Not much". Without some vague commentary of the minutiae of the day, you lose touch with someone's frame of mind and general condition. I think.

And the other is to post stuff which happens at work and I _have_ to vent about, right here, right now...

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Opinionated rant

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