an apology and a wish
Feb. 5th, 2004 01:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluelovesorangeFirst off, I'd like to wish a very very happy birthday to these beautiful women: ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
malisita, ragingpixie, kita0610. Two of the people I love most in this world, and a woman I admire very much. I hope your day is full of laughter, good food, celebrations with people you care about, and HOT ACTION. Whichever order you prefer.
Secondly, I'd like to apologize for using the second half of this post as a bile pit, because I am really angry right now and I'd like to think it's me overreacting, but this all goes back to those anonymous memes - that act of a secret glance and perceptions - how a little thing can escalate into recriminations, accusations, and general inanity. While I'm not talking about Janet's choice of nipple coverage (after all, a boob is 'running' the country so why are we so shocked and outraged about something we all have....unless we're talking about certain personal freedoms and rights and wow, my hate level just went up another notch...)
I shouldn't have looked at my friendsfriends page. I rarely do, but today I felt compelled to see what was going outside my narrow list, and promptly I wished I hadn't. Because there was a post that had a familiar and unsettling red flag all over it and the timing of it was just too coincidental for me to laugh it off or mock it as I usually would. As I posted awhile back, perceptions are funny - there's so many facets to people and not every public face you see is what a person is really like. It's a representation of who they are, but it's not necessarily the whole of their personality. I know that's very true for me - I've been told I sound really candid in my journal and I'm more or less what people think I am when they meet me in person (except maybe a little taller), but what I write in this journal only comprises about maybe 2% of my waking life. There are things I'm never going to share in a public forum, or I'll only do it on a filter, and there's stuff I won't say or I can't comment on, or I'm just a failure in dealing with - whether it's because I don't know what to say or I'm selfish and I can't offer comfort to other people, or what I want to say is potentially hurtful and not useful at all -- there's censoring going on all the time. These journal entries are just like skips through my head, I share enough for whatever my comfort level is at the time, but I'm not going to give the entire scenery away. I'll chat with my friends about stuff, but a lot of it is never going to be posted and I'm fine with that amount of flexibility for this idea of a controlled environment. After all it's an on-line, open journal, where anyone can read it and while I can control the content, I can't control what people are going to take away from reading my journal. It's the first impression curse - people are going to project stuff on me and think things about me that aren't necessarily true, and I can't really do anything about it, unless I lock my journal.
And I don't want to do that, I find the idea of going back 800 posts or so to lock everything extraordinarily tiring and too much hassle. So why am I making a big deal about this one solitary isolated incident? Probably because it was delivered in that glancing, sort of second-thought way and because naturally, I have a different view on the circumstances. But mostly because that idea that anyone can think whatever they want about me - it really slammed into my brain this morning and while the majority of me shrugs it off, the remaining part has to say this:
In which I break it down : I don't want you to want me, but I do want you to tell it to my face
1. You think I'm a pretentious, arrogant, name-dropping brat? You're right. I'm also known as the bitchy peon.
2. Do I have a superiority complex? Of course I do. Often this is when I'm behind the wheel in rush hour traffic and I can take slim relief in the fact that I am better than the asshole in his jacked up SUV talking on his cellphone and smoking at the same time and merging into my lane.
3. I'm a shitty excuse for an English major. I'm taking a grammar course for the first time since I didn't take it in highschool, and as a sort of Literature minor, I haven't read any Russian novels, and as a Creative writing major, I drop commas and apostrophes like pennies down a well.
4. I sound like a librarian and I use ten dollar words because I love words and I love the sounds of some words more than others. I've talked like this ever since I can remember and before Dawson's Creek made it popular and affected. So yeah. I've always been an affected precious geek academic wannabe.
5. I don't owe you anything.
6. When I love something, I ultimately want to share it with everyone I meet. This might come across a little excessive and I'm always worried that I'm shoving it down people's throats. Do I get protective and cliquey? Yes. Is it out of my hands? Absolutely. I can't change your mind and frankly if you think I'm a tool, more power to you.
And with that, I'm making a blanket LJ amnesty unfriending week. If you don't read my LJ anymore and you have me friended out of obligation, please feel free to remove me from your list. I'm not going to take it personally (as I seem to have used up my quota of 'taking things personally' in this one post alone) and I sincerely hope that for whatever reason you had me friended before, that I entertained you, a little bit. And if two people in particular unfriend me, I totally understand, and it's cool.
I feel mildly better now.
malisita, ragingpixie, kita0610. Two of the people I love most in this world, and a woman I admire very much. I hope your day is full of laughter, good food, celebrations with people you care about, and HOT ACTION. Whichever order you prefer.Secondly, I'd like to apologize for using the second half of this post as a bile pit, because I am really angry right now and I'd like to think it's me overreacting, but this all goes back to those anonymous memes - that act of a secret glance and perceptions - how a little thing can escalate into recriminations, accusations, and general inanity. While I'm not talking about Janet's choice of nipple coverage (after all, a boob is 'running' the country so why are we so shocked and outraged about something we all have....unless we're talking about certain personal freedoms and rights and wow, my hate level just went up another notch...)
I shouldn't have looked at my friendsfriends page. I rarely do, but today I felt compelled to see what was going outside my narrow list, and promptly I wished I hadn't. Because there was a post that had a familiar and unsettling red flag all over it and the timing of it was just too coincidental for me to laugh it off or mock it as I usually would. As I posted awhile back, perceptions are funny - there's so many facets to people and not every public face you see is what a person is really like. It's a representation of who they are, but it's not necessarily the whole of their personality. I know that's very true for me - I've been told I sound really candid in my journal and I'm more or less what people think I am when they meet me in person (except maybe a little taller), but what I write in this journal only comprises about maybe 2% of my waking life. There are things I'm never going to share in a public forum, or I'll only do it on a filter, and there's stuff I won't say or I can't comment on, or I'm just a failure in dealing with - whether it's because I don't know what to say or I'm selfish and I can't offer comfort to other people, or what I want to say is potentially hurtful and not useful at all -- there's censoring going on all the time. These journal entries are just like skips through my head, I share enough for whatever my comfort level is at the time, but I'm not going to give the entire scenery away. I'll chat with my friends about stuff, but a lot of it is never going to be posted and I'm fine with that amount of flexibility for this idea of a controlled environment. After all it's an on-line, open journal, where anyone can read it and while I can control the content, I can't control what people are going to take away from reading my journal. It's the first impression curse - people are going to project stuff on me and think things about me that aren't necessarily true, and I can't really do anything about it, unless I lock my journal.
And I don't want to do that, I find the idea of going back 800 posts or so to lock everything extraordinarily tiring and too much hassle. So why am I making a big deal about this one solitary isolated incident? Probably because it was delivered in that glancing, sort of second-thought way and because naturally, I have a different view on the circumstances. But mostly because that idea that anyone can think whatever they want about me - it really slammed into my brain this morning and while the majority of me shrugs it off, the remaining part has to say this:
In which I break it down : I don't want you to want me, but I do want you to tell it to my face
1. You think I'm a pretentious, arrogant, name-dropping brat? You're right. I'm also known as the bitchy peon.
2. Do I have a superiority complex? Of course I do. Often this is when I'm behind the wheel in rush hour traffic and I can take slim relief in the fact that I am better than the asshole in his jacked up SUV talking on his cellphone and smoking at the same time and merging into my lane.
3. I'm a shitty excuse for an English major. I'm taking a grammar course for the first time since I didn't take it in highschool, and as a sort of Literature minor, I haven't read any Russian novels, and as a Creative writing major, I drop commas and apostrophes like pennies down a well.
4. I sound like a librarian and I use ten dollar words because I love words and I love the sounds of some words more than others. I've talked like this ever since I can remember and before Dawson's Creek made it popular and affected. So yeah. I've always been an affected precious geek academic wannabe.
5. I don't owe you anything.
6. When I love something, I ultimately want to share it with everyone I meet. This might come across a little excessive and I'm always worried that I'm shoving it down people's throats. Do I get protective and cliquey? Yes. Is it out of my hands? Absolutely. I can't change your mind and frankly if you think I'm a tool, more power to you.
And with that, I'm making a blanket LJ amnesty unfriending week. If you don't read my LJ anymore and you have me friended out of obligation, please feel free to remove me from your list. I'm not going to take it personally (as I seem to have used up my quota of 'taking things personally' in this one post alone) and I sincerely hope that for whatever reason you had me friended before, that I entertained you, a little bit. And if two people in particular unfriend me, I totally understand, and it's cool.
I feel mildly better now.
