I'm going to expand upon and clarify something I said (or tried to say) in my last entry.

I guess what bugs me about the online diary thing isn't that it's used so much as a writing exercise or whatever, but that people quite often tend to fall into one or both of two traps:

• Confusing validation of their writing skills with validation of their life choices
• Delving so deep into the author-as-subject gonzo method of writing that they can never get out again and are doomed to become Salon columnists

About the first:

The problem I have with the diaryland community, if you will, is that it's so feedback-loopish (as I mentioned in the previous entry). I'm all for writing about yourself. Hell, it's all I do here. :-) But, I'm made uneasy by the idea of soliciting somebody else's approval of it. Where do you draw the line? How do you tell the difference between "good writing" and "good life?"

So yeah, part of the problem there is that some people seek validation for the one as a redemption of the other. And I guess that's part of growing up and making life choices, that you need those choices validated too. I'm down with that need, I guess, although it has always been far beyond me to seek it or provide it to those who do. I'm a bit too literal for that. (News Flash! Sagittarius takes people at face value! Film at eleven!)

About the second:

Bigger problem. There but for the grace of [insert name here, I dunno, Dave Eggers? Doug Coupland? Samuel Beckett?] go I.

I'm all for sharing. I'm all for using yourself as your own best subject because, well, you probably are. I can talk about me for hours. I'm not really sure how many perspectives it's possible to have on your own navel before you become unbearable. (That's rhetorical, BTW. Nobody here that I read has become unbearable yet). I just fear that people will get so entrenched in writing "I" that they won't be able to write anything else.

Quoth my dear friend Krapsnart, "We are born alone and we die alone. We should do our best to make whatever connections we can along the way." I guess I don't agree with her there on the bits at either end, but I do agree with the middle (if that makes sense). My definition of birth and death doesn't include loneliness, I guess. I don't think when you're born you're conscious of being alone, and I think when you die you have with you the memories and souls of those you've known. I think you're only truly alone when you're conscious of being alone.

I am never alone.

link (2000-04-27)