(My mother basically taught me that people kinda suck, or at least enough of them do that you gotta be wary. I don't think she was wrong.)
Also early advice from my mother: think before you speak.
I am not so great at the second--sometimes deliberately so--but the first one stuck with me. I wouldn't keep a diary of anything real because, little cute lock or not, someone might read it. (I did not think of writing in cypher, like Anne Lister; if I had, maybe I'd've written more, and there would be juicy details for someone to decrypt after my death. But see? That's even the point. Anne Lister's diaries got decrypted and fucking published. I would be long dead and would not care as a result, but even so: Mom would be right. I wrote something, and people read it, and I had no control over it. Would have no control. Oh, fuck the verb tenses. You get it.)
The point is, I am less likely to write something potentially inflammatory than I am to say it. Even on social media. Maybe especially on social media: I don't pop off with the first thing that comes to mind (and out of my mouth, snarked for the benefit of whichever cat is in the room and possibly Nous, as we are in the habit of saying the shit we'd never write to each other, just so it gets said). If I say some shit to somebody online, boom, there it is. There it stays. Then everyone else who can read and access that page sees it, and suddenly my snark has an audience, and well, we know how this works. Proliferating toadshit. I'm not allergic to opinions--oh no, heavens, haha, I have a few of those, and they are not always kind--but I don't see the point in sharing them for their own sake, either on my wall or in someone's comments. I don't want to have a goddamned brawl. I hate the drama.
Therefore I avoid posting in Facebook threads, even among my very locked up friends list. I avoid Twitter threads for the same reason, plus, you know, totally public (and I'm a woman and a teacher). I hesitate to post here, even, which is... kinda antithetical to having a blog in the first place.
So I'm gonna try and write more this year. Here, I mean. Even if I am talking to the echoing emptiness of the internet...that isn't really too different from talking to my cat(s) (except Tinycat, who always answers). I probably still won't post a lot of inflammatory stuff because all the reasons. You want to hear what I really think, catch me at a con and I'll tell ya.
