The Aurelian

Having been on LJ for many years now, I find it almost inevitable that my journal should go through drastically different phases. This is, I suppose, true for the majority of bloggers, but I would hazard a guess that these changes exist on a very subtle level for most, or else represent the simple oscillation between "deleted" and "undeleted."

To be sure, blue_lightning has gone through the same period of deletion, but my journal has been marked by many other strange turns as well. It started out as a simple high school accounting of my feelings, then dipped into the world of fanfiction for a few years. But the real rollercoaster ride began when I hit university and word of my journal got out. Suddenly there was no separation between my personal life and my immediate acquaintances in residence - a circumstance that has repeatedly forced me to reevaluate how and why I use this site, rarely to any satisfactory conclusions.

On a more instinctive level, my initial reaction to all these new readers was self-consciousness, and first to go was the fanfiction. Then my serious fiction and poetry was moved to another journal, under strict friends' lock -- and limited almost exclusively to fellow writers. But that wasn't enough; I still felt terribly self-conscious about my posts on this journal, even as I tried to plod forward in the same fashion in which this journal had begun. I started friends-locking everything here too, and created a ridiculous number of filters so I could say what I wanted -- not about other people, but about myself -- without opening myself to ignorant commentary, unsolicited advice, and otherwise critical and judgemental intrusions into my choices and personal concerns.

I finally felt so trapped by all these filters, I decided to give them up all at once -- to start fresh. Boldly, I announced I would no longer friends-lock anything in my journal, and I would make a sincere attempt at overcoming my LJ issues. But that attempt lasted a whole 24 hours, with a single critical comment about the futility of the exercise prompting me to delete my journal. I gave up because I had been trying very hard to accomodate all these strange new acquaintances who'd latched onto what had once been a private and personal forum, and to have said acquaintances criticise my efforts to overcome the apprehensions their presences had originally imposed was too much. I needed a break.

Some three months later, I undeleted this journal (obviously I had undeleted it a few times in the interim as well, to keep it around). In this phase of my LJ life, I declared that openness would reign, but with it a focus on the superficial. When I felt like talking about a burning personal issue, I would pose a question to my friend's list instead. I would talk about inane and silly things, and try to keep the tone altogether lighthearted and "surface"-level. LJ, I decided, hadn't been a proper place to keep a journal in a helluva long time.

Lately, however, this inanity and superficiality has been hard to maintain, and I've tired of the self-indulgence and border-line disingenuity such a persona represents. As such, I'm now turning to a new stage in my LJ life -- one that should easily accomodate the best of both worlds. From now on (until whatever future date when my mood changes yet again) this journal will be a narrative fiction. While not autobiographical, I do not count this undertaking among my real writings (which are, again, on another journal) because the narrative in question will still reflect my underlying thoughts, feelings, and crises. I view this instead as something that will both hone my writing skills for real literary ventures, keep this journal detached and impersonal, and at the same time provide a venue for "emotion dumping."

As always, I really do not take offense to people dropping this journal. If this new venture doesn't interest you at all (or if, in the future, you lose interest) please don't think I will be offended by your "defriending"; I won't be. The aim is, after all, to stop taking LiveJournal (and, in some regards, even myself) so seriously, but without losing my sense of the sincere. To this end, I wish you all the very best in your future travels - online and otherwise. Peace, and happy trails.

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“Growth demands a temporary surrender of security.”