Venting

[jay]

A couple of days ago, I looked at a graph, had a half-hour of angst over some implications, vented in an LJ entry, shook it off and went on to work, focussed on other things. I nearly disabled comments... instead, spent most of my energy over the past two days replying to comments and working out the aftereffects with various partners.

A meta-level comment: I periodically see something that I perceive as negatively reflecting on myself, become depressed, and then rebound. The "down" period is usually minutes-to-hours... I don't generally sit alone at home bashing myself. And I know that I'm not worthless, or completely without some virtues... whatever I may feel when I'm in one of those self-critical periods.

Posting during those periods, however, has led to unnecessary drama on several occasions (either here or on alt.poly) over the past five years. I think I should begin disabling comments when I'm venting at myself...

Comments

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

This is an interesting tradeoff between ideals (freedom of speech, one's own virtual space, stifling expression, etc.) and practical matters of informed consent (readers not expecting this kind of emotionally-laden stuff to appear in their friends-list) or unpleasant side-effects (inadvertently pushing partners' buttons).

I'm a slow, 5wpm, single-fingered hunt-and-peck typist. Both today's and Monday's longer entries each took between 30-40 minutes to write. Because of this, I won't/haven't done private entries... if it isn't worth making semi-public, it isn't worth the effort of typing it just for myself. Longhand hardcopy vents are a possibility.

But I don't want to drag the unwilling through future emotional storms... I think I'll post a notice of an opt-in [vent, friends-only] filter just as several of the people on my friends-list have used. Then anyone that chooses to opt-in have consented to seeing that kind of entry, others are blissfully unaware, and I can keep expressing my feelings in my journal in a timely fashion.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

If you haven't already composed the message for the opt-in, I'd suggest that you detail what sorts of response are okay, if that's important to you.

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the suggestion :-).