Posting and feeling obligated

[greatbear]

I have not been posting much. Anyone paying attention would likely notice this. Thing is, I've always been a rather private, busy sort. I approached the internet in it's earliest days not just for being a techie/business/information resource, but as a way to kinda force myself to be more outgoing, to relate to people I don't know (yet) in a more personal, direct manner. Taking this track allowed me to dip my toe into the interpersonal relations waters minus the direct contact, which was always my stumbling block. You see, once I get to know someone, I'm at ease, the conversations flow, good times are to be had. I found the 'net to be the perfect 'ice breaker' for me, and it's treated me very well ever since.

Recently, though, I feel myself retreating a bit, and really not feeling much like socializing. The reasons are many, from being busy at work and with projects both here at home and up in PA with Jeff's parents, to finding myself seemingly brushed off by quite a few so-called friends that dont return calls or messages. So, I take the hint and replace social interaction with my old standbys like tinkering and projects, going to swap meets, music listening and other introspective pursuits. I'm happy as a clam with this sort of thing. Part of this feeling is probably from 'overextending' myself into the social realm, building a sort of dependence on other people for enjoyment. Well, people have their own lives, like me, and can't be counted on to be the most reliable friends. Rather than feel exposed, I minimized my interaction with a considerable amount of people and instead placed the onus of friendship in their hands. In quite a few (more than half) I was greeted with silence and inaction. Okay, now I know where not to concentrate efforts and instead focus on those that seem to really care. It's a start, I guess.

Now, I've said that I am mostly a rather private individual, and I'm a man of substance. The same internet that brought my out of my shell has changed over the years, and not in the best ways that suit my personality. Services like Facebook and Twitter feed on the minutiae of daily life, encouraging people to constantly publish their activities. This in itself is not intrinsically bad, but it's not for me. I signed up for Facebook as a means to keep in touch with others, and intend to try and use it for that purpose. But I can't constantly upload the droll happenings of my life just because I can, and if I happen to be doing something of note, well, why should I drop what I am doing and tell the world? LJ is like that for me in some ways too. I considered Twitter in the beginning, but thought better of it. All of these electronic gotchas are tinged with 'obligation', which is something I feel uncomfortable with. I am a great user of technology, but I feel like the tech is using me all too often.

All this being said, I intend to keep with my ramblings here on LJ. Unfortunately, a good many people from here have migrated into the 140-character-at-a-time worlds. I'll miss the substantive posts and deeper interactions that 'macroblogging' provides. If it finds readership and interaction, then I am happy.

PS: The New Queensryche album is awesome.

Comments

[le-lapin.livejournal.com]

140 letters posts can be substantive too you know, for example you could summarize this post of yours in much less I think.

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

140 characters is great if you dont have much to say. I enjoy reading people who know their way around the English language, who can paint a picture with words, or who can tell a good story. Some people are up to the challenge of making the limits of texting into tiny novels. Unfortunately, the space is more often wasted with posts telling the world how bad the public bathroom the author is currently sitting in smells, or some such.

I could have used less words in conveying my thoughts, but I chose not to. It's not my style, at least not in LJ. I'd rather ramble a bit. If there are those who prefer I dont, I revert to being the destroyer of minutes they shall never recover. Either is fine with me.

[bearlover.livejournal.com]

I need to check out the new album! I totally forgot it came out. In other news the new Pain of Salvation DVD is soon to be released and I'm stoked.

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

It comes out on the 31st. It's a must-have. Great concept, the new guitarist has some serious chops, and the production and recording is impeccable. No clipping either!

PoS is touring the states this year. If they make it somewhere near the area, I'll have to see 'em.

[bearlover.livejournal.com]

You're kidding! I hope they come this way.

[bearlover.livejournal.com]

Something just occurred to me. The "new" guitarist with the serious chops is probably none other than Michael Wilton. I remember reading that he recorded all the guitar parts on this album.

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

Here's the thing - I generally enjoy reading people's 'mood posts', and other personal bits. I get to know them and have a feeling about what goes on in their lives. Sure beats memes! But for some reason I have pulled back from making emo posts and other things, I feel it comes across wrong at times, and looking back on some of them, I can come across as a basket case. Ironically, I fell back on a couple memes, so go figure. lol

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

I am a fan of words and language. I love it when someone can pull me in with their writing, regardless of the content. Some might get a bit long-winded, but that's an exception. It seems a dying art in this age of sound bites and txt msg blsht. I've got a lot to say, but I tend to keep it to myself unless I have a willing audience. The latter feels lacking lately. :-/

[ciddyguy.livejournal.com]

FWIW, I have a feeling this new micro blogging is a phase and people will tire of it and go back to blogging the old fashioned way over time.

Blogging itself I think is going through a shift in and of itself now that its been around a while but I doubt it'll go away, it's too valuable a method to convey many things from how to live small to whatever.

I have never drunk the Twitter kool-aid and unless I need to, facebook is not going to find favor with me either.

I will say this, facebook and Myspace will soon die for it require much more of your time I think that LJ does for here, you don't have to blog all the time, perhaps once or twice a week may suffice where as facebook needs your input NOW, 24/7 just about and unless it's automatigically uploaded without any effort, it'll not be a long lasting format I think.

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

I have found a lot of enjoyment in disconnecting from the electronic world lately. It's refreshing. I'm a hands-on type and enjoy such pursuits. I can summarize what I've been up to every few days (or more). If there's something urgent, I'll take the time and tell everyone. But I would like to save their time from the more mundane things I do in daily life.

[ciddyguy.livejournal.com]

I do find that even though there are the emo posts from all of us, spilling it w/ those around us can, when they comment to help us see things more clearly and perhaps a new idea or two and that's what I see in blogging in general, but to make it a detached, 140 character entries to me diminishes the positive aspects of blogging.

It's gotten almost to the point that if you aren't blogging for blogging's sake then something's wrong.

[sfmini.livejournal.com]

I got into facebook primarily to connect with people having to do with my 30th high school reunion. All I get is middle aged women, bhech. I added a few people that I knew, mostly from LJ, all it seems to do is give me twice the places to read, you being one of two people that ever responded to anything I said.

LJ has become a list of people not really associated with my life. I feel close to you, first because of MINIdom, but later around the loss of your mother. Somehow there was a connection, of sorts I hope. For everyone else, I just seem to be reading about people I don't know for no particular reason. Blech

But it's here. Facebook, on the other hand, is going, soon.

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

Dont get me wrong, there's people who can work wonders with FB the way some do with LJ or other media. But more often than not, like you find, it's yet another space to place the same data. I arrived at Facebook and after making some friends, I got hit with a barrage of apps vying for my time. It's like memes with search-and-destroy mechanisms. Not what I signed up for. LJ is a much tamer beast, allowing for much more intricate relationships.

I'll hold onto FB for the time being, but strictly in a information exchange and initial contact venue.

[sfmini.livejournal.com]

My only hesitation is the thought it might make me meet a person or two. I don't form relationships and friends very well, if that helps, yay.

[danlmarmot.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty close to where you are, Phil with all this. I've been feeling a need to retreat and not feel so exposed--a great choice of words.

For me, it started a year ago, when I went back home to my parent's house and spent three days cleaning up my 12 boxes of stuff in the garage (not counting the stuff in the attic!). I found a huge stash of little projects: an attempt in 3rd grade to collect samples of every element, a project in high school to make a music generator out of some new IC chip, a drafting project for My Ultimate Dream House (1981), designs for flexagons and polyhedra, designs for new exciting freeway interchanges, old Commodore C128 code to render 3-D ray tracing, a hand written notebook listing the characteristics of every Star Trek planet, a small breadboarded calculator that didn't even do decimal math. Just random geeky project that no one cared about--but I was just enjoying myself, and not interested in their approval or even if they cared.

These projects were very solitary endeavors, and while I thought I'd throw away a lot during my clean up days last year, I didn't. The exercise was both melancholy and nostalgic, and I came away with a feeling that I'm not all that good in the give-and-take of social obligations, and I'd be happier just doing projects on my own. I was alone in high school, but I wasn't lonely, and really enjoyed the long nights working in my room on some little project or another.

So, yes, since April 2008 I've decided to focus on doing more interesting stuff than putting it out there. I signed up for Facebook, but don't really use it. Twitter is... whatever; I don't use it much and update it two or three times a week. I have been doing quite a bit of pictures ('photography' sounds pretentious), and using Flickr a lot more. But that's about it.

And yeah, I think LiveJournal suits my style just fine. I can ramble on as I see fit (as you do, hah, that's a compliment!) and enjoy the detached yet focused back-and-forth that neither Twitter or Facebook provide. I really don't need the "yay, you go!" encouragement those sites provide to get me motivated to do things, and the sharing of too many details to mere acquaintances makes me uncomfortable: I don't feel like I owe them anything about how I live or work or think minute-to-minute.

So that's where I am, maybe it's where you are too. I do look forward to hearing more of your exploits and projects... and I do hope we get to meet someday as well.

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

I bet we used the same chip! Mine was driven by a 6800 microcontroller, and when I told the instructor I was making a music synthesizer as my project, he jokingly said that he wanted to hear the 1812 Overture, complete with cannons.

That's exactly what he got. LOL

I too was the school-aged loner (but not lonely) and preferred my mostly solitary intellectual pursuits. With hindsight, some of the gadgetry I came up with should have been patented. But I know that I was having too much fun instead. And those pursuits of the past serve me well today.

Maybe it's me getting older, or perhaps it's a need to filter the rapid-fire information I am constantly bombarded with on a daily basis. This is why I envy your vacations and trips and your stories and pictures that come from them. I feel we are blessed that we are able to share in all those great moments, but that sharing isnt the be-all and end-all either. It can be a wonderful tool. But if you start seeing the tool as simply a hammer, everything around you begins to look like nails after a while.

I honestly think we are at the same exact point.

[mrdreamjeans.livejournal.com]

I'm reading when you post and I enjoy substantive posts. I know many folks skip my posts now, because I write essay style. I've been looking at Facebook and Twitter, but neither site meets my needs. If I want to know all the details of your life, in short sentences, you're probably one of my closest friends and we'll speak on the phone about it or be spending that mundane time together. I'll stick with LJ and hope that men like yourself keep writing here and that some of the people who've drifted away will come back.

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

Your essays are wonderful. To me they are extensions of your life and your theatrical work. It's an art form to be engaging in that way. Facebook can create connections, but it takes more than that to grow them IMO. Microblogging is like the passing glance, the quick 'hello' or the short announcement. It needs to be made more than that to get the most of it.

[notdefined.livejournal.com]

I know many folks skip my posts now, because I write essay style.
Now stop that sort of thinking right now! Every time I start examining how what I post may appeal to other folks, le_lapin's words come back to me: "but a log is very much like a garden: At one point one has to start because seasons pass plus one really gets out of it what one puts into it." and (sic) Your journal is YOUR journal, where you put YOUR thoughts. The fact that other people can read it should not reflect upon what you put in it. Needless to say, I respect Pascal a lot for stepping up, grabbing me by the shoulders whilst saying, snap out of it Tommy, and making me think. Hugs. Oh, forgive me for not posting yesterday, but a very happy, happy birthday. Folks like you are a very large inspiration to me as I stumble down this road we call life.

[mikiedoggie.livejournal.com]

I definitely think Facebook/Twitter serves a purpose... but its definitely more limited in scope. I feel that LJ is sort of on the wane these days, its easier for people to post just a tidbit or two rather than the time and effort more a more substantive post.

I think think LJ will be around, people just won't be as active on it.

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

Twitter is great for short communications, FB can expand a bit on that, but many use it more like Twitter. FB will condense a post to a couple sentences by default, so efforts to make longer posts are thwarted when the system sizes them to fit in the pile. And none of these services let you create layouts in your own style. I hope that people will use the microblogging sites in ways they are best suited, and they come back to LJ for the bigger picture.

[champdaddy.livejournal.com]

One of the reasons LJ first appealed to me was because it provided a way to express fully developed thoughts and ideas. The limit in scope to FB/Twitter that mikiedoggie mentions above was the same reason I lost interest in chatrooms.

[redmoonriver.livejournal.com]

_I_ would *never* retreat!


*cough*

*cough cough*


Okay, yeah. Totally can't type that without twitching...


I totally hear you on many levels. I guess the strange thing is - for me at least - I'm kinda going in the opposite direction. Yes, I do Twit. I do update my status. Yet my blogs here seem to get exponentially longer every other day. Usually 'cuz I don't have any time I can dedicate to blogging except usually at night.

I do feel like a lot of my blogs are rather self-pitying emo monstrosities - only confirmed by the dearth of response. And yet I can't help but post some of it - a sort of "embrace my inner and external mess" time.

And it's compounded since I, too, do feel like a number of my friends constantly disappear or flake on me. There are only a handful of people who respond with any regularity/consistency. And it's usually *ME* who is the one reaching out first.

*sighs* On the other hand there's only a couple people directly in my life that I really have any _draw_ to hang out with - you know that kinda slight need to go see someone, talk to them, hang, etc.

*shrugs*



And I sooooo need to check out the new Queensrÿche, too!

[redmoonriver.livejournal.com]

btw, this is what I get for replying when exhausted but *HUGS* I still like seeing ya around. ;)

[budmassey.livejournal.com]

I'm not a facebook or twitter fan either. Sometimes they seem silly.

[nyrimmer.livejournal.com]

I'm sort of the same way in fact, I just deleted all the people who never post anything or respond to anything I post. What's the point of keeping them? Facebook and twitter don't do anything for me . That 140 character stuff is really lame and who has the time for it anyway. The few friends here I have I enjoy. Their journals are interesting and even though I don't comment that often I read them all the time.I'm glad you're staying here and you know, you don't have to feel you need to explain yourself for not posting much.We all go thru ups and downs with that. Be happy man!

[fattastic.livejournal.com]

You have been missed, trust me you have. Also, please know you aren't the only one feeling this way.

[notdefined.livejournal.com]

::sniff:: I dun't know no 140 character wurds. :( Keep in mind that our current corporate state of mind is not very good right now and and as a result, many people are withdrawing into their own safe little shells. It is difficult to keep our collective eyes open when everything around us looks so forboding. Poking our heads out every once in a while does give those around us an opportunity to reach back and say, "Yeah, we are still here and we still love you, it's just scary right now." Out of sight definitely does not mean out of mind.

[closeted2.livejournal.com]

I read what you write, but never commented before. i could not agree with ypou more. I am very to myself and have very few friends. the ones I have I have noticed are not that interested in my life, as they have their own lives and problems. One has only himself and his partner to rely on. And Twitter and Facebook are for the young who have short attention spans. I have learned I have only myself and noone else.

[britbear.livejournal.com]

Nice post.
Don't feel obligated on our part. I'd rather read a thoughtful or deep-felt post once a month than drivvle twice a day.
Facebook for me is all about 'stupid shit' that happens that is humorous for the most part. i don't mind sharing that with the hordes and masses. It's amuzing to read other's stupid shit while I'm on the bus or what have you. It's a pay-to-play kind of world.

LJ has a lot more value for me. The time people take to think about wht they're posting and the meaning it has for them makes it a pleasure to read. I take time with my tea in the morning to catch up on LJ. It's a great morning ritual.

I do like that the rise of Facebook has meant that the folks that prefer the twit/fb quick post of 'stupid stuff' focus over there, and the long posters focus on LJ. Which menas ultimately the proportion of good quality posts on LJ is increasing. I like that.

As for sharing - I'll echo the alone but not lonely thing and say that I've found that the more I share of me and my life the richer I have found my social interactions have become, and the less impactful negative shit is in my life. The act of posting is cathartic sometimes.

[envirobear.livejournal.com]

I'm in the same boat, Phil...I created a FB account because so many LJ friends had shifted over there...it was a way to keep up with them. But the longer I've been on there (despite only rarely logging in), the more annoyed I get with the 10-word posts and the scads of invitations to participate in obscure "kidnap" games, etc. One guy who I think quite highly of actually sent me something 8 kidnap requests, 10 safari requests, 9 tropical fish requests, and various other requests in 3 or 4 other FB applications...there hasn't been much other personal interaction beyond that, which makes me feel like I'm a game piece in a board game. Doing those 10-word posts just isn't me...I prefer putting some thought into what I write, so I develop and flesh-out *most* of what I eventually post here in LJ. And I don't post all that frequently, either. I view LJ as a writing tablet, and as an interactive experience that really helps some of us who aren't naturally verbal and expressive...to me, it's the difference between spending a Saturday night barhopping with two dozen friends (which sometimes CAN be fun), and having a more meaningful conversation with a half-dozen friends around a crackling campfire with the only interruptions being the crickets chirping in the dusk and the laughing of people who identify with you over a shared thought. Some people would even go so far as to say that it's an issue of quantity vs. quality. I'll stick primarily with LJ.

[wrascalism.livejournal.com]

I know how you feel. Half the time I don't know what to post, it seems so inane compared to thoughtful posts. And if I don't post something I feel like I'm not keeping up my part of the social contract.

Phuck Facehook!

[beastbriskett.livejournal.com]

You kids stop Twittering on my lawn!

Keep posting what you do. There are lots of us left here on LJ who appreciate a thoughtful, paced post. I'll try to hold up my end, too.

[rockybear02.livejournal.com]

Interesting post Phil...

And it is funny how someone that you think is one of your BEST friends can just drop you in a minute...

Maybe it is me..

Queensryche

[mfpatterson.livejournal.com]

I've only heard "If I were King"
Have you heard anything else?
I also just found out that Mike Stone won't be touring/playing w/Queensryche anymore.
so many questions.

[msclwolf.livejournal.com]

I abhor the concept of Twitter. I dont mind if people are succinct, however, banality is not appealing though I admit it is relative.

Hmmm interestingly the above comment was not given any forethought or correction but I kinda like it and could wiffle on about why as I can do verbosity too LOL which is where twitter and the like fall flat on their ass. Where is the discussion and mutual resolution ro agree to disagree?

I REALLY like that first paragraph.... I want it on a T-shirt.....NOW!

So long as you are happy being who you are AND you can reflect that you would like to grow in certain directions and you do indeed try to do such, then good heavens man you are a far better and more rounded individual than many and should not worry about where you are... tis all relative ;)