Formulative Paralysis
Jul. 6th, 2010 12:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
goldkinIn reflecting over the past several years, I'm surprised by how quiet and complacent I've been in finding my own identity. This led me down many paths -- most, blind alleys and precarious loops around the same topic -- that seemed like good ideas at the time, but served only to stunt my attempts to understand this world and those who live here.
Breaking the silence was the first step toward repairing the damage. While that level of prolificism hasn't made its way here (as I'm notoriously bad at keeping up with public journals), the experience has resulted in a complete removal of the cynicism I've held toward spiritual discussion and the blanket classification of "otherkin" over the past decade. I'm coming to realize, after finding some approximation of community, that my views, experiences, and closely-held existential beliefs are strikingly common on a level I had not anticipated.*
Now, before I continue, this is a topic completely separate from discovering my own draconity and finding shared identity online. I made that discovery nearly eight years ago, after an additional four years of raking myself over coals on whether the issue was a meaningful part of my life.
Rather, this is an entirely horizontal experience -- finding, for the first time, that my cynicism isn't getting in the way of my better judgment. Suddenly, I can actually understand and appreciate what's being said in the draconic and spiritual sections of Dreamwidth, LiveJournal, et al.
While this discovery shouldn't surprise current readership, this is actually A New Thing for me. It stands as a personal shame that, being entirely too cynical to explore the journaling communities further (in 2003!), it took me seven years and a move to figure this out.
Suddenly, this flips me from worrying that an abstract "people" would out me as crazy (for any definition, they will, regardless of my views), to stumbling blindly into a well-defined audience that already knows exactly what I'm talking about. This leaves my opinions as also-rans, and myself with little to add to the conversation.
This is supremely frustrating for me, and stands as the top reason my journaling habits are so poor. It isn't that I lack things to say; I simply feel that, somewhere, someone has already said them far better than I.
Of course, I feel the same way about this post. I'm only letting it escape now, for my lack of finding a poorly-defined "somewhere," and simple need of advice.**
What are your views on the journaling draconic community as it currently exists, and how could a reformed cynic (and virtual-reality engineer) aid discussion in a way that wouldn't be noise?
---
* With the proviso that, yes, this could be my own form of confirmation bias, overly-aggressive inductive reasoning, or a similar misunderstanding on my part. I do not think this is the case, but with only conversation logs spanning to 2006 to back me up, it's difficult to tell.
** Or more likely, because it's 2AM, with my internal editor nursing his last glass of snark before the rest of me goes to bed.
Breaking the silence was the first step toward repairing the damage. While that level of prolificism hasn't made its way here (as I'm notoriously bad at keeping up with public journals), the experience has resulted in a complete removal of the cynicism I've held toward spiritual discussion and the blanket classification of "otherkin" over the past decade. I'm coming to realize, after finding some approximation of community, that my views, experiences, and closely-held existential beliefs are strikingly common on a level I had not anticipated.*
Now, before I continue, this is a topic completely separate from discovering my own draconity and finding shared identity online. I made that discovery nearly eight years ago, after an additional four years of raking myself over coals on whether the issue was a meaningful part of my life.
Rather, this is an entirely horizontal experience -- finding, for the first time, that my cynicism isn't getting in the way of my better judgment. Suddenly, I can actually understand and appreciate what's being said in the draconic and spiritual sections of Dreamwidth, LiveJournal, et al.
While this discovery shouldn't surprise current readership, this is actually A New Thing for me. It stands as a personal shame that, being entirely too cynical to explore the journaling communities further (in 2003!), it took me seven years and a move to figure this out.
Suddenly, this flips me from worrying that an abstract "people" would out me as crazy (for any definition, they will, regardless of my views), to stumbling blindly into a well-defined audience that already knows exactly what I'm talking about. This leaves my opinions as also-rans, and myself with little to add to the conversation.
This is supremely frustrating for me, and stands as the top reason my journaling habits are so poor. It isn't that I lack things to say; I simply feel that, somewhere, someone has already said them far better than I.
Of course, I feel the same way about this post. I'm only letting it escape now, for my lack of finding a poorly-defined "somewhere," and simple need of advice.**
What are your views on the journaling draconic community as it currently exists, and how could a reformed cynic (and virtual-reality engineer) aid discussion in a way that wouldn't be noise?
---
* With the proviso that, yes, this could be my own form of confirmation bias, overly-aggressive inductive reasoning, or a similar misunderstanding on my part. I do not think this is the case, but with only conversation logs spanning to 2006 to back me up, it's difficult to tell.
** Or more likely, because it's 2AM, with my internal editor nursing his last glass of snark before the rest of me goes to bed.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-06 10:52 am (UTC)And this is where I believe your words are valuable - even if they're saying things that have been said before. Because you can be one more voice helping other people realise that their own inner voices aren't just fantasies - that they're part of a common understanding. I know I never tire of just coming across those core awarenesses, again and again, knowing that we're dreaming the same dreams and seeing snatches of the same structure.
With as (relatively) few dragons as there are, and even fewer who are willing to speak at length and in detail about these things, one more voice saying the "same" things (and no two voices are really the 'same" here: they all colour the experience a little differently, all have the potential to catch at a heart where someone else's couldn't) isn't nothing. It's everything.
I say that, if nothing else, it's valuable to boost signal. Because we have a signal that needs boosting, a collective voice that needs hearing. You may catch someone's attention where others do not, by virtue of speaking in your own words and your own space and your own time, where others' words were older and elsewhere, by elsewhom. I will be interested in hearing it, because the song of someone's self-identity is a beautiful thing to hear sung no matter how many times you've heard similar - and you will strengthen the choir.
Can't come to those realisations about how common your beliefs are without a mass of voices, after all.
And if you worry about having something unique to say - I wouldn't. Like I said, you'll be unique just by speaking as yourself, because everyone tells the stories a little differently. And if you speak enough, you'll find yourself saying things that others haven't said before, sooner or later.
(For example, I'd love to hear you talk more about what it felt like to shed your cynicism and actually grok what people were saying. And I think that would be valuable for others who've struggled with the meme that "cynicism = the only smart way to look at the world" to see, too. I know some who still struggle with fears in their heart that the cynics are right, who could do with it.)