Nakedness

[I wrote this in 2015 and left it as a draft until today.]

I've never felt as exposed as I have recently.

This is probably the biggest consequence for me of finishing To Change the World and then deciding to start blogging under my own name as opposed to a meaningless pseudonym. I am way more reluctant to just say things than I was a few months before, especially in writing. I still write quite a bit just in Google docs or a few other places where I have no fear of what I say being associated with me in anything close to a permanent fashion. But I feel strangely alienated from what I'm saying in any form where I expect or intend other people to be able to at least in principal find what I've written and associate it with me. I say "at least in principal" because, to the best of my knowledge, I don't have any readers yet. This is a good thing as far as I am concerned. I'm uncomfortable enough with the idea that people can be reading what I'm saying and knowing that it's me whose saying it. I don't know how I would feel about having that idea become a reality. Eventually, I will try to obtain readers, but for now I need to get comfortable with the idea of not writing to an audience.

I say "not writing to an audience" because that's what I feel like I'm doing differently now from anything I've ever done before. Most of what I've written in the past has been written either for my own private benefit or with one to four specific readers in mind. When I write entirely for myself, I say anything that comes to mind. I don't have to worry about the possibility of people being offended or people questioning my sanity, thinking I'm a whiny brat, or anything of the like. It's only me, and years from now when I come back to it, I know that at the very least I will read it sympathetically, no matter how far my mind has drifted from the beliefs that I have today. I'm vaguely aware that my future self will regard my present self as every bit as much of an idiot as my present self regards my past, but I also believe that my future self will be as amused by my present self as my present self is with my past. That's always been the easiest way to write, and always been the writing I most hope nobody but me will ever see.

Then there are the papers, letters, and a few other narrowly circulated writings that I have produced over the years. (Articles for school publications and all that.) These, I could write usually knowing who I would provoke, offend, underwhelm, delight, impress, or make to feel another response. I could mute the parts of my perspective that clashed sufficiently with my environment to actually cause me worry while still saying most of what I wanted to say. But all that time I was writing for an audience of what? Never more than 200 people I'd say. Maybe a few innocuous news articles I wrote in school had a slightly higher circulation, but not the opinion pieces.

But now, I feel like every line I say will either go entirely unread (which is fine) or offend someone. I don't know who and I don't know why, but I feel like everything I say is going to upset someone that I would rather not upset.

The only thing I know about the internet is that someone is always offended. (I mean the only thing besides like HTML, how TCP works and all of the technical stuff. In context, this remark is referring to my ignorance of the social character of the internet, not bewilderment over how the internet works. You see what I did there? I totally didn't trust you to read my intended meaning in context, and then I got worried that if you did read it correctly you might think I didn't realize quite how heavy handed I was being to explain it more fully. But I did realize this, and felt the need to point that out too.)

This isn't about a persecution complex. I don't think it takes any more bravery to hold and share my own beliefs than I think it would to hold and share any set of beliefs, but I do think it takes a lot more courage than I ever expected to hold and share beliefs in a setting that is truly public. I'm much more impressed by the people who have done it than I ever used to be in the past, to say nothing of how impressed I am with the people who very publicly share things that I would consider much more personal than beliefs.

I'm not talking about facebook or anything like that. Writing for a school paper never intimidated me. Writing for an opinion paper that I knew would have a somewhat self-selecting audience also never intimidated me.