Filtering Yourself

So I spent the greater part of the week just hanging out alone by myself, essentially.  You'd think I'd blog more often when I'm just stuck with myself with nothing to do, but it seems as though I'm almost like clockwork in my posting frequency (nobody should be surprised by this). 

Initially I was going to post about a bunch of things, but I'll save the other stuff for later because I ended up having quite a bit of thoughts stemming from this one topic.

Being more careful with words

I'm fairly certain that I already mentioned before how I distinctly noticed myself using more qualifiers as I type messages and posts nowadays.  I'd like to think this is in large part due to a (hopefully) greater awareness of -- and respect for -- the fact that my opinions may not be shared nor taken as truth, and often don't deserve to be put forth so strongly as a result.  Of course, sometimes this can be dangerous in its own way; perhaps we can devalue our opinions too much as a result.  But I guess I have found (after many years) that I'd rather err on the side of humility.  Honestly, I think this is something that just needs to be learned through experience...experience both in committing the sin itself and in seeing the negative impact it can elicit when others do the same.  And hopefully when you realize that you said something that wasn't the best, you can adapt rather than simply choosing to double down...

Anyways, I just wanted to add that I now find myself more commonly editing messages immediately after the fact, when I read them over and realize that maybe the correct tone wasn't conveyed -- or perhaps the tone and meaning that I originally intended wasn't really appropriate to begin with.  Online discourse and conversation is an interesting medium in that it actually does allow for these "take-backs", these edits.  Of course, I think the fact that I sent the message without proofreading it in the first place is perhaps a sign that there is room for improvement.  But maybe that is just the next step on this journey.

Interestingly, I never really find myself rewriting my thoughts when it comes to handwritten letters.  I guess that makes a lot of sense if you think about the medium -- writing in pen is more permanent, and rewriting a sentence can look messy at best.  And of course, the very nature of the medium is conducive to mulling over your thoughts first before putting pen to paper.  This all makes sense to me.  But I bring this up because I've known friends that tell me that they've revised letters, or needed to rewrite them, or started writing but didn't send it because it wasn't happy with how it was going.  It's a different approach, I think, to letter-writing than mine.

In my more youthful years I was wholly unashamed at my own thoughts, and this is perhaps an experience shared by many.  As a result there was never really any reason for me to filter my writing -- I wanted everyone to know my all, because it was important that people accept me for who I am -- my unashamed, unfiltered self.  I later learned of course that this way of being comes with a myriad of problems, but I think it's a mistake to label this as a strictly "lesser" way of being, because there is a certain purity in being wholly yourself.  We often speak of "lost innocence", of the feeling of loss that comes from turning from a child into an adult, and I think that much of that has to do with this feeling of "being ashamed to just be yourself".

When you think about self-expression on social media, do you feel that people express a filtered version of themselves?  Or do they express their full selves unashamedly?  I think many of us would think of the former -- for me I think of smiling photos of people as they are [travelling to XYZ place, being with a friend or partner, eating some sort of yummy-looking food, etc].  I don't often see people post photos or stories of themselves when they are depressed, having a down day, sick, or crying, though of course this depends on the specific platform and community.  There are websites where I can read about inspirational stories, there are sites where I can see no end to heated arguments (and sometimes pointless debates...), and there are sites where I can admire incredible creative works, but there are few places online where I could read about how a friend feels lonely, maybe in the same way that I do sometimes.

This is something that I would argue is the difference I feel between social media today versus social media in its infancy.  In the days when I read my classmates' posts on Xanga, LiveJournal, even MySpace, I felt like I was seeing more of them than I had ever been exposed to before.  For perhaps the first time in my life (?), I understood that these were =real= people, facing struggles in their lives like I was.  I had never seen these things underneath the mask I saw everyday when we passed by each other at school and sometimes made small talk.  And so I felt as if I was not alone.

I'm not saying this was "the right way" to do social media -- like with most things, there are tradeoffs.  But even though posting angsty song lyrics, mundane complaints, and vague allusions to social drama may not have necessarily been the best forms of self-expression, reading these things was meaningful to me.  It felt as if online spaces were places where people could remove their facades, instead of crafting new ones.  This is why I've always believed in the inherent ability of technology to make us feel truly connected with others -- even though that is often no longer how it is used today.  It is this that pushes me to continue trying to share my personal thoughts with others on this blog, despite the fact that it may no longer be in vogue to do so, and perhaps carries more risks than it used to.