On blogs

[tarigwaemir]

Stanley Hall, on the Feast of St. Herbert

The irony is that I said on the Tumblr I wouldn't blog until I finished the items on my to-do list, but I am sitting here, attempting to convince myself that I really want to write yet more R code, while really reading through old LJ entries of various people on my friends list. (Er, yes, I do that sometimes as a means of procrastination.)

Anyway, tackling one of the associations that tryogeru gave me for this meme: "blogs (all forty two of them)".

I once started a Xanga (the account is still active, for all I know) and a Pitas, neither of which I updated. I didn't properly start blogging regularly until LiveJournal.  What happened was that my high school friends, lush_rimbaud and kaydeefalls, were pretty heavily involved in Lord of the Rings movie fandom at the time, and they joined, after discovering an LJ-based RPG (if I recall correctly). lush_rimbaud gave me an invite code; I gave mine to tryogeru, both of whom were completely responsible for introducing me to slash, anime and fanfiction.  I started exploring other blogging options in college; in freshman year, my hallmate, delentyevox, pointed me towards a Manila-based service hosted by the Beckman Center for Internet and Society at HLS, and that was the first manifestation of infinityblog, which is where I post about new books I finish reading.  I moved the blog to a separate Wordpress installation once I bought a domain and a hosting plan. I don't really update it as regularly as I should, but it's probably the blog that I am most likely to keep even if I decide to abandon all others.

I also have a blog on Naver, ostensibly to practice Korean but mostly to post cryptic and not-so-cryptic comments, usually when I was miserable or hurt and usually in a mangle of Korean, English and occasionally French (which probably comes across as an affectation, since my French is school-taught and stilted). Sometimes I wonder why I haven't locked down everything on that blog (basically I posted things that I wanted to get off my chest but didn't want to write in LiveJournal, out of embarrassment); probably because I know that it's difficult to find and only ever visited by Koreans, who probably have no idea what I'm saying in English.  Anyway, I stopped updating it after I graduated, and it will probably remain abandoned from here on. I have a (Korean) Cyworld minihompy as well, but I don't really consider it a blog, even if it's described as a blogging service. That I got for social networking purposes.  I have no real content other than photos and a locked post on rereading Sherlock Holmes (which I really should retrieve for consolidation purposes).

What else? I have two Wordpress.com blogs, one for original fiction snippets, which I started in response to Tin's project, Kinked, and one for science-related posts, which I intended to help me practice writing about science but has turned into a R/Unix personal cheat sheet. Ostensibly, I have another Wordpress.com account under "tarigwaemir" but I made that to get the ID for the Akismet spam plugin a few years ago and never intended to make a blog out of it.  I started a Blogspot blog for my bamboo plant, but that was also a dead end project. Sigh. In the world of microblogging, I have a Twitter account, which I use fairly frequently nowadays, thanks to the Twitterfox extension.  When it comes to Internet blogging trends, I'm a lemming.

And of course, the Tumblr. I like Tumblr very much.  I import my Twitter and Google Reader Shared Items feeds, which makes it rather annoying to follow, I suspect.  It's not the best format for long introspective blog posts, but I post those anyway.

I have been trying to pin down exactly why I felt the need to switch to the Tumblr and how it's different from posting on LiveJournal.  Obviously, there is much less interaction there; to be honest, that is part of why I switched. It's not that I don't want an audience or that the audience on LiveJournal is a constraining one; it's just that posting on Tumblr allows me to indulge in monologues.  Also, I have acquaintances who know of the LiveJournal but presumably haven't found the Tumblr yet, so it offers more privacy despite being absolutely public.  It's both more personal and yet more impersonal as well.  Tumblr is described as "scrapbooking", and I think that's probably the best description I can give of how it feels to blog over there.  Even my longer posts are "scrapbooked" thoughts; they don't fit into any long-standing patterns but are discrete elements unto themselves.  aishuu once said that my LJ writing style was probably the closest to old-school "journaling"; my Tumblr however is not a journal, and perhaps that's the best way I can describe the difference.

A tangent: I've been off-kilter for the past few months, and while I know what triggered it, I've been puzzled as to why it's continued for so long.  My current theory is continous burnout without full recovery.  Also puzzling is the actual nature of the aberration: why is this mental state different from all the other cases of burnout, stress and mild depression that have plagued me before?  I think the key is the failure to detach myself; I have never remained so immersed in an emotional state for so long without any respite.  One of the reasons why the switch to Tumblr happened was because I wanted a sense of distance from myself: I think it's succeeded in offering me that much.  I also wanted a clean start; I still feel tempted to delete my LiveJournal here but there are a handful of entries that I want to save for myself first.

I may end up joining Dreamwidth once it goes live and attempt keeping a journal-style blog again but not for a while.

Much less seriously, on "green": it is my favorite color.  I remember that until kindergarten, I used to say that I liked pink, until I realized that everyone expected me to like pink because I was a girl.  So I decided to like green instead.  No, I wasn't a burgeoning feminist at the age of six, as much as I'd like to boast that.  I was merely perverse--or as one of the kendo alumni would say, "obstinate".  That isn't to say that I don't feel a genuine aesthetic appreciation for the color: otherwise I might have chosen black or purple (not blue though since it was too obviously the opposite of pink).  My favorite shade of green is the dark, rich hunter green but I like other shades as well, including blinding neon lime.

Yours &c.

Comments

[murinae.livejournal.com]

*hugs* I do confess that I kinda miss seeing you on LJ, but I'm also feeling the burnout sort of thing ... and I notice that on my flist, there's not been a lot of updating lately either. Strange, huh?

My computer dumped links again, so I'm trying to find where I used to go and with what, and for some reason, I'm not picking up a lot of the old fandom links that I'd normally go crazy for not having. Oh well.

Hehe, my favorite color is actually blue, though I'm not quite sure why beyond the I like deep sea critters in the blue blue sea sort of way. Strangely enough, most of my wardrobe is in red, since I am vain and think I look best in that color. XD

but um, anyway, hi. ;)

-muri

[murinae.livejournal.com]

ps: um. Oops, that kinda reminds me. I vaguely remember you talking about the cultural appropriation discussion that was happening between a lot of fantasy and scifi writers. I finally just sat down and wrote out what I felt about it, but I put it under a voluntary filter because I wanted some discussion about the whole thing with people who wanted to discuss it ... anyways, no obligation, but do you want to be on the filter?

[troisroyaumes]

Yes, I'd definitely like to hear your thoughts. I'm still sorting through my own thoughts myself.

[murinae.livejournal.com]

Okay, I added you to the filter. THe post is really long and kinda arduous, but you can find it here (http://murinae.livejournal.com/2009/03/20/).

I think I'm going to be embarrassed about it in the morning, but everyone who asked to be on the filter are very intelligent so I'm really wanting to hear everyone's views.

I wrote it because I really did want to sort through it all ... but it's gotten so gargantuan that it kinda made me pause about adding to it all. Thus the filter and the attempt to try to make sense of it in my own terms.

Thank you though. I kinda felt awkward asking, but I really do value your input and I remember that you talked about it briefly, so ... yeah.

-muri

[troisroyaumes]

Hi! Yes, there's been a general silence lately; I think people are busy. I'm not the only person stressed out either, judging by posts on the friends list.

(Also, I haven't been commenting on your posts much lately; very sorry about that! I do enjoy all the craft photos though~!)

I like blue too; it's probably my second-favorite after green. ^_^ And that's true, the colors we wear often aren't always our favorite; I probably wear more black and grey than green. (Huh, that makes me sound like an emo teenager. XD)

[murinae.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think you're right about the stress on everyone; I know my life's been chaos wrapped in trouble. XD But well, there is some grace, so I'm not going to complain too much.

*G* Most of my posts have been too silly really. The cultural appropriation thing is the most serious I've been in awhile, and I probably really just stuck my foot in my mouth. geeeeh. *winces*

Hehe, I wear a lot of black too, along with my reds, so yeah, favorite color has nothing to do with my wardrobe choices. Oh goodness, does it mean I value my vanity more than personal self expression? XD

-muri

[uminohikari.livejournal.com]

I feel that your science blog would be more interesting to me if I ever..used R or Unix.. >> *laughing*

Aww, I really like your journal-posts though. There's something nice about that style..

[troisroyaumes]

Heh, I ought to post more about biology but I never get around to it.

I'm just not able to write journal-style posts without feeling exhausted at the moment. It'll probably pass with time though.

[schwimmerin.livejournal.com]

Mine is also green, though most of my wardrobe is blue.

I hear you on the burnout! I mean, not anymore, but it got to the point in undergrad where I actually hated science and biology. And I don't think I ever actually liked lab work until now either. Hope you can take a little break after your quals and refocus a bit. :)

I've never taken a look at your Tumblr :(

[troisroyaumes]

Hee, you have good taste in colors!

Heh, the source of this particular burnout is actually not really lab or school, though I think work-related stress is responsible for perpetuating it. I don't particularly feel negative about science or biology or labwork at the moment--I just feel like I hate myself, which is not normal for me, and I can't talk myself out of it, despite attempts at self-therapy.

Anyway, I'm glad you're enjoying lab work! I'm looking forward to getting back to experiments now that I'm almost finished with proposal drafts.

I'll email the link if you want it, though I have to say that it's mostly linkspam, so it probably sounds more interesting in the post here than it actually is. (Not false modesty, plain assessment of the facts.)

[love_archived]

Wow, Tari. I thought I was the only one with a blogging history like this! Thank you for this post. *snugs*

Re: considering deleting your journal: yeah, me too. I'm thinking about making all aiwritingfic entries on apples_for_me private, transferring moderatorship on comms I mod to ann_applecore, deleting all the posts on aiwritingfic, and then just starting over with a name change. Bit drastic, though.

[troisroyaumes]

Haha, though I will have to defer to you in that you manage to keep up several blog accounts with regularity, which is something I haven't been able to do.

Drastic, but sometimes one feels tempted to do it. I don't know, I probably won't, but occasionally I feel tempted to at least just lock everything down.

[love_archived]

*laughs* I'm not sure about regularity, but I do post more often (because I talk too much). ^_^; <3

Mmm, I'm not sure anymore. I might do the lockdown thing, yeah. I'm tired of dealing with old posts some days.

[mbeasi.livejournal.com]

I think people's blogging needs change over time. Having recently moved to my own self-hosted Wordpress blog, I can really relate.

[troisroyaumes]

Good to know I'm not alone! ^_^

[mercurysblood.livejournal.com]

Take care, wherever you go. :)

[troisroyaumes]

Thanks!

[magicnoire.livejournal.com]

I hear you. This has probably been the longest time I've ever blogged under the same username in the same venue. I'm thinking of heading over to DreamWidth when it opens and starting anew there since I don't like the feeling of stagnation and that's what I feel like I'm doing here at the moment.

[troisroyaumes]

Feeling stagnant--yes, that's exactly what I wanted to say. I suspect DW is going to get an influx of people who want a refresh.

[ramble-corner.livejournal.com]

Well to my thinking, blogging is NOT supposed to be an obligation, so it's up to you to decide where you felt most comfortable.
My history on LJ is more of a lurker rather than a participant but surprisingly this LJ survived despite my bad posting habit XD
I tried blogger before but the format somehow put me off. And I'm not that motivated to get my own site to host my own blog or use wordpress *g*
Good Luck Tari, wherever you ended up, I have always enjoyed reading your posts though and hope we could at least maintain some contact ^_^

[troisroyaumes]

Thank you! And I should probably clarify that I will still make fandom-related and meme posts on this journal, so I'm not disappearing. Just...spreading myself out, as it were. ^_^

It's always a pleasure to see you post on LJ, by the way; you share the most interesting links.