lettered | Time in the world (to talk)

Current Mood: optimistic

Entry tags:

Time in the world (to talk)

I’m talkative. When I was little, my Dad gave us a word per week in the summer. They ended up each pertaining to qualities about us. My oldest brother got something that meant glum and moody. All my next oldest brother’s were words such as, “erudite”. (My mom begged for a word; he only gave her one: callipygous.) Mine for the summer were these: loquacious, verbose, garrulous, and gesticulate (I talked even when my mouth wasn’t moving).

Whenever I get on AIM, or any chatting device, I end up talking to people I haven’t talked to in years. This is a many splendid thing, except that it takes approximately nine hours, and by the time all the conversation windows get clicked closed, I’m still not done:
1) With the dishes
2) With my writing
3) With my laundry
4) Watching Important Things, such as James Harriot and 80s baseball anime
5) Talking to friends I haven’t talked to in years.

The end result? I do not get on AIM. I do not chat. I do not pass go.

Most things end up being like this with me. The other day at movie night, I had all sorts of thoughts about the movie! But lots of people were talking, and my thoughts were long, and complicated, and very involved, and mostly for the ears of

my_daroga and Mr. Daroga. The point is though, I ended up not saying anything, because I knew it would take too long, and that the kind of discussion I wanted would not result from it.

I do this with lj. I have a million things I could post about, but don’t, because it will take too long. I feel like I’m wasting time; I feel in the end I still won’t say what I mean anyway; I feel people won’t read it because it’s too long; I won’t have time for the discussion because it will be too involved, etc etc. It’s part of my weird lj neurosis, which I believe I have discussed elsewhere.

It makes me sad. LJ is particularly cool because I think you can have the involved conversations I want to have on it. The formatting is fine for long discussion, plus the people here are thoughtful, and when they’re not, I don’t have to know that they didn’t listen to me. I don’t have to see blank faces or people trying to politely disengage from the conversation; I just get people not commenting. Which is fine! Furthermore all this gets recorded, both my insanely long thoughts and people’s insanely long thoughts back. It is perfect for me in so many ways!

Anyway, what I’ve decided to do is try to spend 15 minutes a day making a post. I spent 15 minutes on this one, and even though it’s stressing me out to cut it off here, maybe it will inspire me to keep going, and finally get some thoughts out. Some of it is writing, some fanfic, lots of thoughts about writing, and life in general. It may turn out to be fairly boring, but maybe I won’t feel such regret about having this wonderful tool and not using it appropriately.

. . . Watch me only do the 15 minute thing until tomorrow. I guess it’s worth the effort.

Threaded | Flat

Well, FWIW, I miss you a lot when you're not around.

You are always welcome to make long comments over in my neck of the woods, if I happen to post about anything you're interested in.

That's my hope for LJ, too, and why I blog here - hoping to get into some more involved discussions. It doesn't always happen, but I'm always open to the possibility. If I post about it, I'm interested in it, and I figure that if someone takes the time to leave a comment, they're interested too. So no "tl;dr" for me ... :D

I have a million things I could post about, but don’t, because it will take too long....

Yes and thrice yes. I have the same problem: too many higglety-pigglety thoughts and not enough time or oompf to get them all down in coherent order, much less respond to everybody else who might come out to play. I can nail my habits to a couple of newish circumstances -- my 8-5 job and my roomie. The former means my time is more regimented, and I have fewer big chunks of it for just sitting and thinking and making, and the latter means I talk the poor woman's ears off at dinner instead of saving it up for lj like I used to.

But at the same time, I MISS gabbling with people, especially you. I have two of your posts currently sitting in my main bookmark folder, the "to be engaged with" queue -- "Persistence of Memory" and your meta about writing when you're obsessed. And I want to read your Batman. Just -- *pant pant* -- can't keep up! I often feel like a long, thoughtful post deserves a long, thoughtful answer (you know how I am about fic feedback), and then I'm squashed under my own internal guidelines and never reply at all. But they stay there in the Bookmark Queue of Intent.

Anyhow, I hope you do post more regularly at less length. Once a day is ambitious. But I don't want to lose touch completely!

I have a million things I could post about, but don’t, because it will take too long....

Oh, yeah, sometimes I have the same. I want to say my LJ friends about all those things I was doing but then I think about those all other things I should do and I don't post anything.

I hope you will keep going with this, first of all I really like to read your post, second, you know, it can be actually funny for you. I like these days when I post three or four times on my LJ and spam people their flists.

80s baseball anime

!!!

Tell me more!

I used to be the same way, worrying that it was an indulgence to post or talk about myself rather than writing or doing things that need to get done or Watching Important Things, but I've gotten into the habit of emailing a friend every day and just blah blahing for like 5 pages and it's such a great release.

Anyway, you seem like an intelligent person and I'd love to read your thoughts on fanfic, writing and life in general. :))

I get lj neurosis too! I have so many posts that I basically write in my head and then don't post because they would be so long and I worry that my opinions on just ransom things would bore people. But I love to hear what other people think of things, so maybe we should worry less! I hope your 15 minutes thing goes well.

I do have a tendency for tangets, that is my main problem (have you seen the Sekrit HQ?! Me and K go off on the most random side conversation), and so often when I comment on things I end up saying, sorry this is so long/so rambly!

Also, James Herriot, as in the Yorkshire vet? All Creatures Great and Small? I love him so much.

See now, I really want to say something like "sorry, shutting up now" here, but that would be completely against the spirit of this post. So, please, I love to hear the rambles of others...

I think you're very interesting, a *great* writer, and I like your thinkiness. I also think that women in particular self-censor too often because we're told in various ways and from various directions that what we have to say isn't of value (which makes me both sad and stabby).

I used to make long posts fairly often in my primary journal, but I've been in a very internal headspace for the past few years and I *can't* make posts like that very often anymore as much as I want to. I miss it, and I'm glad when others do it.

i liked this post.

my lj neurosis is that i have a single journal for both fic and my personal posts. so i public the fic and f-lock the personal. most of the folks on my f-list are real life, local friends, and we all post frequently about the mundane, and then read each others mundane-ness. (on a side note, which maybe is important: i have a kid, and most of my f-list is made up of parents so there is much fodder about the children. mainly how they discover constantly new ways to make us insane. so my f-list is often more like a support group in virtual.

also, i am severely and persistently mentally ill, an activist/engaged in anti-oppression, and in poverty. see above for instances of commonalities and likeness to support groups.)

so. but there are a few fandom people i have friended because i absolutely don't want to miss their fannish posts. just a handful, but i am very aware that they know little of me directly, yet have access both to very personal content and very mundane content, which i post nearly daily.

and sometimes i am even afraid that my close knit circle gets tired of my over-posting, rambling, and just generally creating mass amounts of content that have no consequence and are little more than my train of thought.

and then there are pan-flashes wherein a feel moved to make a personal "this is the state of sonya, in summery" public post, so that those who only see fic and fannish entries have a chance to know a little more about me as a human being. when i have this impulse, it freaks me out, and i have often made such a post and then deleted it soon after, or worried about it all day. (plus, self-summaries never express any more than a series of facts it seems. like paving stones with nothing between them.) also, i am left feeling pretentious, like who am i to assume that people who have friended my journal because they like my fic give two shits about my medical issues or what stupid human trick my five-year-old invented or how the welfare office makes me feel like i'm crumbling.

i think that i think i'm interesting, and that i think my life is an interesting one, and that my take on it all is interesting too. and how narcissistic a person does that make me? and what if i'm wrong? (in my head i am thinking of not leaving this comment at all, which is a perfect example of all of this.)

tl;dr: me too, both wordy and neurotic. i would love to read you.

I think it is a great idea to a) post daily and b) give yourself a time-limit to make things more structured. Of course, I am biased because I like hearing your thoughts. They frequently turn out to be really really interesting!

As you can see, dear, you are not alone. I think I only post a quarter of what I consider posting about. I, however, love reading what others have to say, including this post.

lj neurosis! Mine has met and been wrangled into submission by my other ones [read: third year of grad school] and thus, this is the first time I have even looked at lj in over a week.

I do not have a problem with you being alternately verbose and elsewhere.

Oh fuck, language is not functioning for me currently: HI.

*blank face*

...kidding. Looking forward to see you posting more. ^^

You are not alone in having an LJ neurosis. I think about making a post, worry about it, wind up not making it. Not really for the same reasons you have, but kind of along the same lines. And sometimes it's all about not having enough time, as you said, even if my posts are not *nearly* as thinky and discussion-oriented as yours. Anyway, it's always lovely to see a post from you here. It's definitely worth the effort!

You guys always make me feel so stupid and unthinky. Which I guess I am.

Sweetiecakes! Go for it! Write, be verbose, go on tangents. This is LJ-land. This is, as you say, where you can do it. And knowing you and your LJ, people will respond and I'll show up days too late and five bucks too short (as seems to be my habit) with some asinine and completely irrelevant response.

I'm having the opposite problem because I know that people don't really read my journal so I keep thinking, what's the point of posting what's not getting read. But then I think: Practice! And that's good, too. As an exercise in working out thoughts and theories, even without the sounding board to bounce ideas back and flesh out theories and worm out the wormy, hole-y bits. And then, every now and again, someone will comment and my brain has to work.

So, post, jeune fille. Post! Write long, thinky, drawn out things. Even if its only 15 minutes worth of thoughts, I think, people will come and read and comment. If you haven't noticed, it's always a party and a good time when you show back up. WE MISS you and your brain when you're away being shy and unsure.

OK? Ok.

Ha ha! I don't get on AIM for that very reason.
Anyway, I think it's interesting to read what people think about writing and fanfic and life in general. At least, I think you're an interesting person, and so I would be curious to know what you think about things. Anyway, that's my two cents worth. =)

Obviously I have lj issues as well, in different directions, but I'm almost constantly thinking that I'm "letting someone down" by not posting enough/thinking enough about what I post. The things that are probably more interesting and important would take time, and for what? So two people could respond, one of whom might give me some discussion. So what happens is I write off brief reviews and, when the pressure builds, give in to f-locked private "woe is me" posts that I regret except sometimes they *do* make me feel better. The result, however, is a continuance of the cycle of not posting things that would make me feel like my lj was a cool place to be.

Obviously you and I are in a different place because I get all your stuffs in person, which I am so so grateful for, but at the same time I adore your LJ posts because I like seeing where you go with the stuff we talk about--and what you've been thinking about on your own that I don't know about.

I love reading your posts; between the ADD and the fact that I drop offline for long periods, I find it very difficult to have conversations. I'll look at a long-ago comment that's still in my inbox because I wanted to say something, and realize that it's ancient, and just archive it, because it seems... stale. Even though it maybe wasn't. I also suffer from worrying about being stupid and talking too much (god, I wish those old voices would STFU), so I tend to drop out. I read a lot, though, and am always happy when I see your name on a post. for what it's worth.

Threaded | Flat

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject