I am so sick of a lot of things, and one of them is feeling like I have to update my weblog. I'm tired of learning about my people only second-hand through the Internet and I hate that we follow our friends lives the same way we follow the news: by checking for updates. As if it wasn't enough that we're radically disconnected from world events, now we're also drastically disconnected from those we love. Or "love."
I'm trying to remember how many meaningful conversations I have had in the past month, and it can't be more than a handful. And one of them was probably via the Internet.
Now I normally would complain about how society is fragmenting, people are being isolated, real human contact is diminishing, etc, etc.
And without a doubt it IS an awful way to live.
But I think that part of this is my fault.
Weblogging, in its many forms, is really a performance. Your audience may be quite small, but it still exists. Whether you are being witty and clever or somber and self-pitying, you are still being watched.
It's easy for some people to forget that, and their journals become a long, rambling, self-indulgent form of catharsis. There's something kind of pure (although usually very annoying) about that. But I rarely, rarely write what is really deep inside of me. I am very aware of the performance.
I am very aware of these three things:

-I cannot afford to be seen as weak.
-The truth is almost always ignored.
-No one wants to hear about my problems.

I have seen too many dreams fail, too many confessions met with silence and too much anguish run unchecked. I am losing hope that whatever lies deep inside of me will ever see the light of day. Instead, my life will be a series of performances, and whatever makes me ME will be compressed tighter and tighter inside my chest until even I no longer know what it was supposed to be.