Loneliness

I feel like… since I’ve been doing this “write every day, what a brilliant idea!” thing… I’ve felt, overall, a lot more… emotional upheaval, directly related to posting here.  I have emotional upheaval all the time for other reasons, obviously, but there’s a particular flavor that is… this… daily writing.

And it isn’t the DOING the writing (it was at first).  It’s something else.  And I’ve circled around it and poked at it, trying to figure out what it is, and I’m not sure I’m there yet, but I may have my fingers on an edge of it.

I think… it feels as if… writing here makes me feel… lonely.

Which is weird.  I’m communicating, with others, I’m connecting.  It should be the opposite of loneliness.

My best guess right now is that…  before… when I posted every six months or so, I didn’t have to open this channel.  I didn’t have to share in this way on a daily basis.  I didn’t have to be vulnerable to myself.  I didn’t have to be vulnerable to others except when I chose to be.

Now I’ve put myself in this position of doing it every day… when I want to or not… and even when I’m not going deeply into my vulnerability, even when I keep it superficial, I’m still… outputting.

And I mostly output without feedback, unlike say, a social media platform where I get into a “conversation” or a “debate” and there are multiple people participating and the conversation is going back and forth.

This is solo.

I think the feedback in those other platforms is… insulation.  It is distraction.  It allows me to focus on something else.

Writing here doesn’t give me distraction.  It doesn’t give that feedback loop, it is just… monologue.

And there is feedback… obviously… people leave comments, things I write here lead to conversations offline with Sir and with sub brother and with friends…  It’s not that there isn’t feedback.  But… it isn’t immediate.

When I write here, it is me and a screen, and… the sound of keys clacking.  No one else’s words are coming in to fill up the silence in my head.

And I think that is… hard… for me.  I do a lot to fill the silence in my head every day.  This is a time when I don’t give myself any of those crutches to lean on.

This is hard.

And probably that’s good.

But it hurts.

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