dog sting awareness day

i think there are elements of this site's culture (or at least the section i am embedded in) that foster incuriosity and more generally i think the posting format of interaction is one that can really wear on a person if they let it. and simultaneously i think this site has generally been a worthwhile outlet for me to express myself and hone my opinions through that expression, and if i'm honest with myself the reasons i've partaken in that expression less lately have less to do with intentionally detaching from something unhealthy (i'm still on here plenty) and more of a retreat into an ashamed silence, a reflex that's been causing more noticeable problems for me as of late (and part of why i'm even bothering to post this at all is an attempt at countering that reflex) but one i think i've always been prone to. you spend your whole life believing that because you want something, because you think something is true, that means it must be incorrect to express. lately i've been experiencing a sense of feeling believed by other people, and, relatedly, i've been excercising my "opening up to other people" muscles more intentionally. it's been quite nice.

which is all a digression from the point i'm trying to make, which is that "tumblr fosters misanthropic behavioral patterns" and "tumblr is lame" are two distinct sentiments, the first being true and the second being something a person can say on tumblr to seem cool and above it all as long as no one remembers that they're on tumblr too. this is a site full of miserable people lashing out at the same miserable people they're posturing for the approval of, sure, and it's also a site i've met people important to me on and more importantly a platform for me to blog on, and a format not imminently or intimately communicative with anyone but viewable by everyone has some unique appeal.

and besides all that i think i'm gradually coming to terms with never escaping myself. which, when phrased that way, sounds like a downer, but it means thinking about what i actually want and acting on it, and (consciously and deliberately, rather than the inevitable alternative) using and learning from my own experiences rather than pretending none exist. trying to escape myself is a waste of energy compared to trying to get what i want. thinking in terms of "i want to be a different person" or "i want to be a person who X" is never going to get me anything. conversely, "i want X" might get me X! lmao

i like writing down what's going on in my brain. it can be hard to feel motivated to actually do so a lot of the time, but it always ends up being really rewarding. i've noticed my motivation towards reading and writing is inversely correlated with how aware of myself i currently am. i pulled an all-nighter for reasons not to be disclosed on this blog and then pulled another one the day after by spending 18 hours straight on a short story collection. it felt very rewarding. for some reason, i ballooned a journal entry (i do keep a journal outside of this blog, and have for the past six years, i just haven't really given it consistent updates for a while) into a fake substack article i'll never publish and then went on a rant inspired by it and the show we were streaming to some friends about week later, which (very understandably) freaked one of them out kind of badly, which i still feel a little bad about, but it did lead to a very pleasant-to-have conversation, one which i hope was actually as productive and reparative as it seemed at the time and seems in hindsight. (i have very little reason to believe it wasn't! this is just something i can't speak definitively about.)

maybe i'll have a new blog soon. no, i'm not trying to escape myself, but "myself" isn't "this blog". i don't think leaving this site would be good for me, at least not for the reasons i was considering doing so. but i would like a change of pace! i think that i'd like a fresh start on here, ideally with more clarity of intent and less arbitrary restraint (and, yeah, probably fewer followers). i also think that everyone should give themselves a terrible haircut and whine to their friends and cry themselves to sleep about it and entertain fantasies of becoming a hairdresser at least once.

it feels like i've been sharing a lot more of my personal life in this one post than i have since i was seventeen, or at least more earnestly. posting for self-expression's sake rather than for the sake of making a post