privacy

I haven't been blog reading for a long time.  I don't have time, because I'm too busy repeatedly visiting the same seven sites over and over in closed circuit repetivity.  However, in the interests of NaBloPoMo community spirit, yesterday I clicked through to one of the blogs I used to read.  It has been closed down.  Not completely closed down, just 'I am not writing any more, that phase of my life has past, I am all about privacy now' closed down.  At least I know the author is still alive and has not met a grizzly demise.  (Actually, I re-found them on Twitter and they tweeted less than an hour ago - definitely alive and kicking)

It got me musing on privacy.  I haven't blogged much lately.  Apart from having no time because I am repeatedly visiting the same seven sites over and over in closed circuit repetivity, I haven't had the heart to blog.  It's been a hard year.  A bloody hard year.  I have not wanted to share much of that with anybody.  (Except my psychologist, who is perhaps rather tired of hearing of it all ad nauseam but I figure that's his job.)

Am I more private now than I was?  Maybe.  Maybe I'm just embarrassed that the same issues come up over and over.  Personal growth.  Not.  Possibly I grew tired of being judged for airing my private troubles and exposing my vulnerability without reciprocation.  One of my friends told me I am over emotional and need to deal with it.  Meanwhile their battles are played out in the privacy of their mind. (To be fair, most of my blogging friends were airing their thoughts.  Real life friends not so much)

Perhaps I'm not more private or more scared, just more wise in what I share. Staying away from blogging has meant I've journalled my most intimate thoughts and feelings.  That has been healing.

So if I jot out posts about the trivia of life, maybe that's not about privacy so much as with  finding little things soothing when big problems refuse to resolve the way I'd like them to.  Or maybe, like my blogging friend, it's time to hang up the blogging hat.

I'm not sure.  In the meantime I'm blogging but not linking anywhere, a kind of semi-false privacy.  If you stumble across this, well done.  If not, my musings are between me and... the world I suppose.  All food for thought don't you think?

technology

So I've just committed to writing every day for a month again.  Which has the benefits of getting me writing, but at times it leaves me typing late and leaving Frank a NaBloPoMo widower, just when I need to be spending less time on technology.

I'm not hooked like some people I know. (Ah the sound of self justification)  Partly because our internet connection isn't great, and a little because my mobile phone is only a semi-smart phone and it just won't do all the things I want it to, and a teensy bit because I don't want phones and laptops to rule my life.

But if I'm honest, they rule me more than I want them to.  I pull the laptop out at the dinner table more than I like to admit.  I check in to facebook a little obsessively, especially if I've written what I think to be a particularly clever status update... Instead of signing up to write online every day, it would be more helpful if I was winding back my technology use and focusing more intently on the people around me.

Oh well.  Thirty days it is.  Let's hope the benefits of reflection and musing (aiming high to begin with) outweigh the disadvantages of tapping our a line or two and constantly checking for responses.

nablopomo

Happy chatter has been somewhat grave-yard-ish for a while now.  A virtual wasteland filled with naught but ghosts of posts long past.

Hurrah for NaBloPoMo, surely sent to rescue me from the blogging duldrums, beating back the encroachment of teensy tiny facebook status updates on my writing world.

Let's face it, who really needs to blog after dribbling a constant feed of froth and bubble chatter to a bunch of carefully selected friends?

Me! Me! Oh yes, me!  I still need to blog!... I just haven't been.  Instead I've clicked through a mindless routine of six or seven sites over and over and over.  And over.  I'm rather tired of them really.  That part of my brain stimulated by new inbox notifications just isn't being stimulated anywhere near enough.  (Honestly, how can it be?  I visit every ten minutes.  I'm not popular enough to receive emails, hits, likes or comments to satisfy that much unhealthy craving for positive feedback - especially not since I ditched half my facebook friends in a fit of pique.)

It's time to break out of the stifling straitjacket of internet addiction and start thinking again.  Think and puzzle and write.  Ponder and express.  Speak my mind freely and at length.

So yes, hurrah again for NaBloPoMo.  Just in time to kick start my writing endeavours once again.