(no subject)

I have four Spike/Wesley stories on the AAS home page. I didn't have any Spike/Wesley stories a few days ago. Interesting coincidence, totally unconscious on my part.

Very fun Spike/Xander collaboration in wiseacress's journal here. If you haven't read it yet, it's definitely worth it.

Personal posts

I just wrote up a post, and it inadvertently got really personal and I started venting, and I ended up getting all teary and emotional as I wrote it. I posted it friends-locked, waited about five minutes, decided it was TMI, and deleted it.

Do other people do this? I do it a lot, and mostly I just feel miserable afterwards. Maybe it's because I haven't worked out my feelings as to how I feel about TMI posts and personal info and what constitutes too much and so on.

I mean on one hand, I feel like this is me, and why should I hide it? If I'm feeling something and it means a lot to me and it helps me to write it down, why should I be ashamed of it and keep it hidden? Why not just be myself 100% and not care what other people think?

But then I think of how many times I've heard someone get mocked for being too personal. "Did you read her? God, I can't believe how much she reveals. I would never show that much of myself in public." Or, "God, she's so whiny and self-involved. I read her for amusement 'cause she's so messed up." I don't want to be one of those people.

And really, it's not like you go around exposing your deepest personal feelings in public in real life, so why would you do it online? I'm almost incapable of expressing myself in reality; I keep almost everything that means something to me deep inside. But it's so easy to sit alone at your computer and write it all down.

So why not just write it down but not post it? Is there some validation that you get from knowing that other people have seen it, and that it's not solely your own anymore? Why should your feelings be more valid simply because other people have seen them? Logically it doesn't make much sense, but it's a real emotional feeling. Maybe related to the same reason we show our art in public, even if it's very personal and done to express ourselves, not to get public approval. Or maybe deep inside it really is a way of fishing for approval and/or sympathy?

I wonder if my hesitation is maybe just a matter of wanting people to respect me (not that many people respect me anyway, but there could still be a few left). I know I have a lot of respect for certain people who are always very calm and rational and post interesting thoughts and opinions instead of whining about their lives all the time. But then again, there are many people on my friends list who post very personal information frequently, and who vent in their livejournals, and that doesn't bother me at all. I still like and respect them, and I usually like the opportunity to get to know them better too. One of my problems, the reason I've had so few friends, is that I can't connect emotionally and show my real feelings to people a lot of the time. But then again, if my real feelings are unattractive and insecure and whiny, then I should keep them hidden, right? Otherwise I'm just going to scare people away, or attract people equally as fucked up as I am.

I'm not making any judgements or conclusions here. Just thinking as I write; clearly, my feelings are very contradictory and confused.