(no subject)

[stonebender]

I get the feeling I have caused some of my friends some distress with my 20 mystery comments. Thinking back on the whole thing I probably should not have participated. I did enter into this particular meme with little thought. I use most of these live journal games and quizzes as a way to spur me toward posting. I have a bit of a love hate relationship with writing. I love having written something. I feel very accomplished when I complete a written work, but I don't like writing very much. I find it difficult to get started. I am often filled with self-doubt about what I write. Why the heck anyone would be interested in anything I had to say is often beyond me. What I have liked about live journal is because I want to feel included in this cool group of people, it pushes me to write.

Often when I do write, I talk myself out of posting what I have written one way or another. To circumvent this I have made myself a promise not to think too much about posting a piece of writing. Write it. Post it. Don't allow myself to talk myself out of posting my writing. This has worked well, helping me produce written material. I'm not sure it's worked very well for those who might be affected by what I have to say.

I did intend my 20 comments to be mostly positive (I don't think there's more than two or three that could be read as negative). I also never intended any comment (except in one circumstance) to really be about an individual friend. What I hoped would happen would be most of the comments could be applied to most of my friends one way or another. Sort of like my version of a positive Dot Cattiness. I never expected the few negative comments to be the ones that many believed were about them. I'm sorry if I caused anyone any distress.

It is important to realize that in several cases what my friends post in their journal is all I have to judge them by. Which is a very narrow data set to be making any judgments on at all. If anyone happens to think a particularly negative comment was for them. It most likely wasn't and if it was, what the heck do I know anyway?

Comments

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

When I made the general comment about "20 anonymous comments" in my LJ, your was one of the main lists I had in mind--but I wasn't offended at all, more frustrated by the whole idea. Overall, your approach to writing in LJ sounds like a good one. I have a similar "just write it and post it" philosophy, though for slightly different reasons.

[stonebender.livejournal.com]

What was it about my list in particular that prompted your comment? If you don't mind my asking.

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

First, I didn't even know if I was on it or not--you know, could have been either way. Then, as I read it, as I said, it seemed a vast range of comments could have applied (if I *was* included), and I had no idea how to rule *any* of those out (as being about someone else). So it was evocative--as I sometimes read all of the newspaper horoscopes and try to see if *any* of the advice is usable by me at that time--but, as I said, frustrating. *Any* anonymous list I might or might not be on would feel the same. Clear?

[stonebender.livejournal.com]

Sure that makes sense. Except for the frustration part, that's exactly how I wanted people to take my comments. So I guess I have no reason to be surprised.