LittleWyvern.com

I have been taking an increasing number of increasingly long showers.

That, at any rate, is the short version of a much longer explanation as to why I haven’t written a new post in nearly six weeks. There is a strange phenomenon that eventually arises for (presumably other) people who keep some sort of public and serious blog for any serious amount of time. Writing personal content invariably involves writing to some degree about the other people in your life, and as your blog’s readership grows it becomes inevitable and unavoidable that anything and everything that is written about anyone and everyone will eventually reach those people… and, given enough time, will then eventually come back to you. The writer suddenly becomes accountable for everything that is written.

That is a lot of pressure, man.

Let’s stop a moment for some historical context. I began keeping an online blog back in the early days of LiveJournal as a way of physically organizing my thoughts and personal observations. In 2003, even more so than now, I lived mostly inside my own head. I felt like little more than a witness to my own life and more often than not I was miserable. I secretly experimented with the journal as a way to give my internal monologue an external voice so that I could (literally) sleep at night. That anyone else ever actually read my writings was entirely accidental and wholly irrelevant to their true purpose. Later, as I professionally descended into the realm of web development it only made sense that I would build a series of personal websites. While I primarily used the sites to teach myself about their construction, simultaneously using them as my journal’s home gave the websites direction and purpose. Finally, when I moved to Las Vegas this website became a convenient way to keep in touch with the friends and family I had left behind. I stopped chronicling my thoughts and instead took to describing my experiences. My readership grew and, quite painfully to me, my writing became increasingly boring and less relevant.

You see, time and again I found myself having to apologize for or defend in real life the various things I had written in my journal. Whether it was a worried phone call from my mother, a wounded comment from a friend, or a hostile aura with a co-worker, the true life ramifications of my late night electronic scribblings presented themselves with painful regularity. I mentally compiled a growing list of Topics and People to Avoid in my blogging (work, family, friends, feelings, thoughts, opinions) because it had become quite clear that everything I wrote – no matter how well intended – would somehow find it’s way back to me.

One night my sister and mom got drunk on margaritas and giggled together while they showed a girl I liked a series of personally embarrassing blog posts I had written several months earlier. “Hate” is probably too strong a word for the emotion I felt towards my family for that… but it’s not too strong by much.

My boss found my blog and read some entries about how I was thinking about looking for a new job. Awkward.

When my grandmother died I stood up at her wake to recount a random memory of her. The particular memory reminded a few of my family members of another personally embarrassing story that I had posted online a short time earlier and they all began shouting out for me to retell it. Cornered, I quickly told a largely irrelevant story to a room full of people in mourning, many of whom then laughed at how big of an idiot I am. Never mind that my grandma just died and her body is on display right here, tell us again about how you are a moron, please…

Later, at the church during the eulogy, without any warning my father literally quoted the post I had recently written about my grandmother’s death. He did it as a way of expressing a shared controversial viewpoint (amongst my heavily religious family at least) while deflecting that controversy off of him and onto me. I understand now why he did that, and am flattered. However, it is an understatement to say that it brings about a complex and powerful emotion to have a church filled with both family and strangers suddenly and unexpectedly look your way as they all listen in devastating silence to a few sentences that you casually wrote one afternoon without any sense of or consideration for their coming importance. Though spoken by someone else, my own words finished the eulogy, and every eye in the church seemed to follow my every move as moments later I stood up and helped carry the coffin to the waiting hearse.

That last one is probably an extreme example of my larger point, but despite my best efforts I have very little control over how my words will be received or in what manner they will find their way back to me. Because of this my constant worry over their reception and impact has a crippling effect on the posts that I am willing to write.

My observations of other people are not always flattering and I do not want to hurt anyone’s feelings. An exploration of my own thoughts and feelings will often lead to people asking me questions that I do not want to answer. Even seemingly funny anecdotes about my bumbling interactions with the world quickly become fodder for mean-spirited attacks by Lukas and my brother, or merely cause for a painfully awkward moment at the next family get-together.

What then is left to blog? Fantasy football? Ugh…

No, it would seem that the best way to ensure that nothing bad happens to anyone (myself included) is to simply not write anything at all. Of course my internal monologue does not stop with the lack of new journal entries, and so I am left to completely internalize myself once again. I find myself slipping back into my own shell, observing my life more than living it. I am much more irritable much more often and to both maintain my sanity and keep from becoming a hateful person I will often retreat into the numbness of a long, hot shower.

Lukas and my brother probably think I am constantly going to work on my downstairs, but the truth is slightly less sordid. Twice a day I slowly spin underneath the searing water, face up with eyes closed, and mentally write the journal posts that I never physically will. My mind calms as my thoughts find order, and for a little while longer I can tolerate the world around me that I clearly see but of which I do not feel a part. The showers get longer, hotter, and more frequent while this website’s new entries disappear.

I don’t really know what to do. Part of me wants to shout, “To hell with the consequences!” and put everything out here, while another wants to delete this site and domain. I don’t know… having written this post I am nervous to even click ‘Publish.’