Other Blogs

Blogging is an interesting thing. I have been posting in this blog for years but it is mainly for my close friends and family. I have decided to branch out with mixed results. I have trouble posting with the regularity that I intend but here are the addresses of my other projects:

My Novia and I write about roleplaying games here:

http://rpglifelessons.blogspot.com/

My Novia, our friend Scooter and I write about the plays we see here:

http://notintheatre.blogspot.com/

I have started a new blog dedicated to my craft work and as an eventual companion to an etsy store here:

http://makermead.com

Facebook Dynamics

I have added a few new friends to facebook this week. These are people that I met at an improv show called The Dungeon Master (see my Stage Ninja post) and It has changed the way I see my facebook. Until recently, all of the people I had friended on facebook were people that I know and spend time with in real life. I don't tend to be the person to initiate the friend request and on more than one occasion I have deleted or rejected someone that I don't know or don't care about.

Now I look at my status updates differently. There are people that will get my updates that don't know me. I consider things differently now that I have these new acquaintances. I want to keep personal information to myself but at the same time I don't want to bother people with frivolous bullshit, so my posting has dropped precipitously. I need to figure out what these new "friends" mean to me and how I am going to handle them. Do I charge forward full speed ahead and let them deal with my posts as they will? that seems to be the only answer as I will not allow it to stifle me. I just have to get used to my new use of Facebook to share with new people instead of just keeping tabs on old friends.

Connections

Ok, this one is even more sappy then the last one. If you are getting sick of it skip this next paragraph.

I am still resisting. Slowly the barriers come down and slowly I let her more and more in to my life. No, that's not true, there is nothing slow about it. I am running desperate and foolish. First it was the calls. I try to keep it cool but we talk for an hour or more on the phone about anything, just drinking each other in. We talk about her, about me, we talk about cultural identity and how it relates to ethnicity we talk about movies and places er have been. Then, when the week is over, we can see each other and hold each other. We look into each others eyes and kiss and think of anything anywhere as long as it is together. Then apart again which is like pain. I am addicted to her, to her touch, to her smell. It is a physical thing a crawling feeling beneath my skin, a shiver along my spine. I think of her and want to reach out, to text or to call. I check facebook and then I check again. I know her email address and want to connect to her via chat, but I don't because it will kill any focus that I have left. How can you miss someone that you saw that morning?

One thing that I still keep separate is this blog, but I do not know for how long. I asked a friend of mine and she told me what I should have already known: that it will be time when it is time, and counting days is irrelevant. I want her to be able to know about me and about my thoughts. I believe that she would care for me more after reading these posts so that is not what is stopping me from sharing. If I give her the address to this blog it will create an imbalance. She will have access to a couple of years of my thoughts and feelings. My thinking on my ex, my fears, my insecurities. I will have none of that. I trust that she is being open and truthful to me, but there is so much ground to cover and I think we should cover it together. Even so, I am already compensating for her future access. I have already omitted a post that I would have made about us. Only time will tell.

Sharing

How much disclosure is enough? How much privacy is normal? I have been writing in this blog for a couple of years now, and soon I will have to make a decision that I had not considered on the nature of what I post here and with whom I share it.

I have a facebook account with almost no profile information in it. I just deleted my myspace account yesterday and this blog is set to not show up in searches. I write this for myself, my parents, my closest friends, and my future self and family. Now there is a girl that I am interested in and must decide if and when she is allowed to read this blog. I know that I am not ready to share yet, but where is the line?

Friends

It is difficult sometimes to restrain myself from writing about the current events in my life with my friends and their emotional states and our interactions. It is mostly because this friend may see the post, but it should be mostly because my friends emotional states are not mine to disclose. This does have the end effect of stopping me from posting about my state but it is right that I choose discretion.

Anonymity

I have been trying to figure out what kinds of things to write in this blog. There is the obvious question of how honest and introspective to be, and I am fairly comfortable sharing my hopes and fears here. The more subtle and more obvious question is how detailed to be in my descriptions of where I  go and who I go there with. If I say I went to Kabuki Sushi in Hollywood then anyone with any brains can look it up and find the restaurant on Vine St between Sunset and Hollywood Blvd. If I name one of my friends then someone can google the name and possibly find information on them. Its not like I am providing the information, but I am highlighting the person or place. So far I have taken care to use only vague place names and first names but even that may be too much for some people.

I used to have a livejournal.com account where I used a pseudonym and felt relatively protected by that. Now I use my name in this blog but avoid using my full name. People of my generation and younger seem to be coming to the conclusion that there is no privacy any more, but I have trouble getting behind that. There is a certain privacy to be found in anonymity but if someone is looking for me they will no doubt find me. Am I worrying too much? I am not some cute girl who would be afraid of stalkers. I am not in any way famous.

I know that a high percentage of my few readers have blogs of their own. Are you afraid for your privacy?

Why I Do This

I have been blogging here for a few years now and I suppose that it is about time to reexamine my motivations. Initially I was going to post mostly pictures here, because I had a few that I wanted to share in a more deliberate paced format than you get out of flicker. I also figured I was going to want to write something every now and again. After a while I started posting my workouts so I could keep track of them but I was never very consistent so it became a bad record. Now I use this blog to talk about the things that matter to me, and to keep my parents and friends in the loop about my goings on.

Thats right, I just said that my parents read this blog. "But you wrote about strippers in this blog," you say. I am one of the fortunate few people that has a good and open relationship with both of my parents. They know me for who I am and love the man I have become. I am so very grateful (love you Mom and Dad) for that connection.

I also use this blog for introspection and future reference. I want to be able to look back years from now and see what I was thinking at these points in my life. As I attempt to carve and shape myself into the man I want to be, I want to record it for future review. I also want the potential of sharing these thoughts with my children one day. That kind of live record of my life and thoughts may be interesting to the future me and possibly my future family. To that end I am attempting to be as honest as possible.

A Post About Posting About People

I have once again run into one of those hateful quirks of the internet that can drive a man crazy. Many of my friends have blogs of their own, and of course when you have a blog you post your feelings much like I am doing right now. This allows you to gripe anonymously and get things off your chest. The problem occurs when you wish to vent about a friend who is in your social network or subscribes to your blog. I have recently found a third place where a friend has posted something that I perceive as negative about me on the net in a place I should not have seen it. There were no names and the post was written to not point out who it was about but I felt it was about me and about a conversation I had. I was alerted by a mutual friend as before, and I had to figure out how to proceed. It is a different friend posting and a different friend notifying me each time, so It is not a personal pattern, but a general one.

This is one of the most seductive things about the internet. The ability to anonymously, blow off steam, or offend with no real fear of consequences. Should I be offended when my friends post negative things about me on the internet where they think I won't find them? I feel that it is as if they are talking behind my back. Or is it just a common part of our hyper-connected culture that I need to accept. Is it acceptable to post something behind a privacy filter so that some of your friends can see you complaining about another friend? Or should these things be open to anyone trolling the internet? I am left offended but uncertain as to how justified I am in my offence.

I try to resolve differences in person and with no ambiguous terms. Not everyone is as assertive when they have been offended or perceive that they have offended others. I posted months ago about a friend that decided that they don't like me and would not like to be around me if we didn't have mutual friends. In that case I let the matter go, but in this case I wish to repair the friendship. I enjoy spending time with this friend, we have things in common, and are in regular communication. This makes me feel like the whenever this person looks at me they are thinking "what an asshole" and I care about the opinions of those I chose to surround myself with, and if there is a problem, I want it resolved.

So I got in contact with this friend to talk it out. In the post It seemed to me that my friend was upset at some things I said and I wanted to clear the air and expunge the offence. The conversation can be summed up shortly

ME: I saw this thing. what's up?
Friend: WTF? that wasn't really about you
ME: so we good then?
Friend: we're good <3

Now I'm not sure if I'm still the asshole for bringing it up or emo for getting all upset. Am I in the wrong for peeking into a private post? or should the friend not have posted about me hidden from me? It is very difficult to find boundaries on the internet. Now here I am posting in vague terms about a friend who posted in vague terms about me. So is this just repeating the offence? Damn this is complicated.