I'm an angst ridden soul most days. I over think and fuss and fidget like an old < insert gender of choice > most of the time. It's the way life is for me.
Lately the tension has surrounded my thoughts of abandoning LJ to move to a less journal oriented space, but on investigation, I can't find anything to indicate that the LJ administration discourages blog type entries, which kind of surprised me.
So in the future if you find my need to post links to things that interest me and brief but position oriented statements on those entries irritating or disagreeable, the delete button is as handy for you as it is for us all.
If you have some information regarding what is typically blogging behaviour on LJ that isn't user driven, please contact me, as I would not want to contravene the mandate here.
My style of journal when I was doing this on paper was much the same as I began this venture. I am the universal traveller and make notes about the sights along the way and now I'll be going back to that format. I started that way then somewhere I got the idea my style wasn't appropriate for this medium. On further thought I think that's ridiculous. Avoiding someone on the web is so easy! I can be as easily avoided as anyone, so I'm going back to my freewheeling, scattered, and varied style postings. Or maybe for some it will be more akin to a furthering of that style.
Conformity isn't something that comes naturally to me and for the longest time I thought that was a shortcoming. Now I don't think it's a shortcoming, but it is something that alienates me from many straight line thinkers. I would think that my type would have had their genetics weeded out of the stream by now if we didn't serve some key purpose. It's obvious to me that to adhere to the community norm has it's benefits.
I always think about this when I see a friend of mine and his activities in his church. He's not a particularly religious man, but after a nasty break with his then wife, he became a member of a local evangelical Christian church. He's not stupid that's for sure. The congregation was overwhelmed to have a new family participating and years later they continue to support and facilitate a much smoother path through life for this guy and his kids. Vive la differance.
Context is important, but to my mind, so much of it simply reveals lazy minds following the line of least resistance. Maybe not in this friend's case, but certainly that would be my opinion about many of the paths people follow in groups. It's simply easier that way.
It irks me because it appears to me that it cripples our ability to change. It seems like we are genetically programed, hard wired if you will, to avoid change, maybe increasingly at our peril. The irony to me is that we lust for knowledge while grossly out of balance with action. It's so much easier to know something than it is to act on any of that information.
Consistently I meet Jews with lucid minds. I'm intensely curious about the norms of parenting styles within that culture and what role conformity plays there.
Love, goyim.
Much of my sense of frustration comes from my own inability to change the things I'd like most to change about myself, never mind the changes I think might be wise for others or other groups large and small.
So my place in the order of things is not a straight line. Mine is to paint with a broad brush and not stick to the proverbial shoemakers last. I have about the same capacity to change those habits as others more competent to follow the straight and narrow do with embracing improvisation.
I'm not sure a change here will even be noticeable, but rest assured the ground has shifted at this end.
Rave on you crazy diamonds
