Things, stuff, energy, people, blah.

[baratron]

Thought-provoking stuff I have read recently:
Repeating the obvious: energy levels, by redbird.
can we still be friends?, by the_siobhan.

Both posts explain thoughts & feelings I'm having at the moment, but in a much more coherent way than I'd've managed.

Also, someone called me tonight & suggested I should set up a "moan filter" on my lj, so people don't have to read it unless they want to. I'm loath to do that, because I only post friends-only if there's a need to (like, if I am already feeling afraid or attacked and need to know who can access the post), and I think it's useful to post publicly about health stuff, so other people who have got diagnosed with the same stuff can Google & find someone to talk to about it. However, if a lot of the "no one's reading my journal" feeling is coming from the fact that no one's reading it because they're sick of the moaning, or scared of the spikiness (have I really been that bad-tempered the past few weeks? I guess I must've been), I might have to.

Comments

rather than a filter

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

A tag and an lj-cut? Which is pretty much what you've been doing anyway.

(And thank you for the compliment.)

[clawfoot.livejournal.com]

You've already been lj-cutting with clear labels. Why bother with a filter?

I haven't been commenting much, mostly because anything useful I have to offer had already been offered by someone else (and likely far more eloquently than I could have myself). But I am still reading.

[quiet000001.livejournal.com]

I'm still reading and don't mind the moaning. *hug* I just don't always have time or energy to reply. (Have gotten sick. Bleh.)

[elfgeek.livejournal.com]

I read your LJ, but sometimes I'd rather not say anything than risk coming across as patronising/complementing it with a personal story or repeating what other ppl have said.
but yeah, you could use an lj-cut if it makes you feel more comfortable but you don't want to filter.
just a thought: filtering is something a lot of ppl, including myself, primarily do to protect themselves, not others (i.e. they don't ask, they choose who goes on a filter and who doesn't).

[baratron.livejournal.com]

That's how I use filters when I do use them - I filter in the people that I feel safe reading a particular entry. Things that are filtered tend to be intensely personal, to the extent that while (in most cases) I wouldn't mind everyone on my list knowing it, there are certain people that I don't trust to say something helpful. Some of my friends & acquaintances have a habit of getting hold of the wrong end of the stick, and if it's a particularly painful stick, it might hurt me a lot to get prodded with the wrong end. If that tedious metaphor made any sense :)

I *like* "me too" comments. I like *hugs* and even blank comments, which to me mean "I have read this and I have nothing coherent to say, but I wanted you to know that I've read it."

[elfgeek.livejournal.com]

I sometimes cringe at the thought of just typing *hugs* because a lot of ppl find it trite - but I'll keep in mind that you feel slightly differently about this! :-)

[hiddenpaw.livejournal.com]

It's quite possible that the "Nobody's reading this" feeling may be caused by people already having said all they have to say on the subject and thus having no constructive comments they haven't already said.

[bfo.livejournal.com]

i'm still reading it and would read your moans even if you did filter.

You could just do what some other folks are doing and type [moan] in the subject line of the posts that you'd otherwise filter, then if people don't want to read it they can skip over, but it's then still public.

[hiddenpaw.livejournal.com]

By the way I agree with you posting publicly so the infomation is out there for others. I don't see much point in live journal if you filtter everything in to little interest groups. How can you know weather something is of interest or use if you can't read it and you don't want to have to freind half of LJ.
If things are really not of interest to people they can skip it. I for instance subconciously skip posts the moment I Spot the word Sims. It just doesn't interest me but I'm sure it is entertaining others.

[porcinea.livejournal.com]

Oh, for fuck's sake. (Um, directed that person, not at you.)

People already don't have to read it unless they want to. Sheesh.

I approve of your moaning in public plan. It is useful, both for those with similar issues, and for those of us going through our own moaning over different issues.

[rowan-leigh.livejournal.com]

Er, please read my explanation below.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Ah, it was friendly, not unpleasant :) I like getting phone calls at 2am from other people who are also awake. The problem with being awake at godawful am is that almost everyone you know in the same time zone is likely not to be, so it's difficult to find someone to talk to. Whereas I turn my mobile phone off if I'm asleep or otherwise unable to make calls, so people can ring me on that number anytime. And if it *is* 2am, I have free minutes & can call them back.

Anyway, as the owner of the comment has said, it wasn't meant as a proclamation "you SHOULD do this", but as a "here's an idea that might work...". And we talked about it, and he agreed with what I was saying. But I'm insecure enough at the moment to be wondering if I am in fact wrong. That was why I was asking, not because I was offended by the comment.

[rowan-leigh.livejournal.com]

There wasn't meant to be a "should" about it. :) I thought that if you had an opt-in filter, you'd be confident that the people who had opted in would want to read your (quite justified) "moaning".

[rowan-leigh.livejournal.com]

(And I thought your reasons for keeping the posts public were better than mine for closing them.)

[baratron.livejournal.com]

S'ok :) I know how you meant it. I suppose my explanation was unclear. Meh :/

*hugs*?

[rowan-leigh.livejournal.com]

*hugs*! :)

[treacle-well.livejournal.com]

I say, just because it's not filtered, doesn't mean they have to read it. (A quick skim and skip--it's really not that hard).

Like you, I only post friends-only in specific circumstances (which are rare) and none of them have to do with someone not liking to read certain content. Frankly, that's their problem, and I'm not going to fix it for them by filtering.

You do use cut tags when you go on at length about something, and I think that's a suitable strategy for easing the comfort of some of your readers.

And, for the record, I don't particulary mind reading your "moaning".