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: 2010-07-08 05:38 am (UTC)I think that in itself, though - if you'll pardon my strange way of looking at what is, to you, a disadvantage - is something that makes what you have to say, right now, worthwhile. Because not everybody who's feeling out this path for themselves right now has been in the community for five, ten, or twenty years. Not everybody is at 301 level, talking about the concepts based on the concepts based on the interpretations of the nuances of the concepts. Some of them will be where you are, or before where you are, and will want to read things from your perspective.
I think worrying that it's "too late", that you could have and should have got into this earlier, is counterproductive. Say what you do have to say; it'll find its audience. And grow from there.
It sounds like your story is a unique one. I've seen plenty of otherkin who've been around for a decade or so, plenty of them who are just plain new to this, and a couple of them who believed once and faded into cynicism over time. I've never seen the story from the other side - someone who knew the concept was out there for years, but is only just patching things together due to prior cynicism.
And it interests me because in some ways, it mirrors my story: I'm someone who knew about the concept for years, but - not due to cynicism, but due to my lack of recognition that I wasn't going to have that definitive, "Eureka!" moment upon finding my identity, and that I just had to trust in what felt relevant without expecting a blinding flash of revelation - I've only explored it in myself in bits and pieces, and never been able to claim it as definitively as some.
But anyway, again, I don't think you need an enduring story of the past. I think what you have in this moment sounds like a great story: the stories of those who have fought their way out from under cynicism and realised there's something better on the other side are rarely told, and that alone is worth hearing in more detail, from my POV. I'm curious about what, specifically, you understand now that you didn't before, and how your prior viewpoint clouded you from understanding it. I think those things would be useful to people who are sitll clouded, and they would be interesting to me.
Thank you for the links, also! I will certainly browse through those.
Don't worry about rapid responses. Being welcome is more than enough!