Hello friends. Today’s a reflection on whether writing to blow off steam is worth it.
For background, I started journalling in the advent of highschool, since that’s the moment you fall off the rails. Where you may confront those things naturally forgotten, like how nothing lasts forever. The empty highschool parking lot captures that transience.
Anyway, it was one of those spiral notebooks, with the slimmer white spaces. “College-ruled” I think it’s called.
We were between houses and settled into a third story apartment. The view was gorgeously plain at night, with the amber lighting and continual raining indicative of Summer in my area. After all, staring out my window was a Coca-Cola machine glowing. A fence between – the other side was a different complex, though maybe categorized as a neighbor downgrade: you had to walk to the laundromat.
Out of curiosity I dug into my archive. It’s been at least several years since I looked at any of these. Well, nothing to report other than how easy it is to forget how simple your younger “self” can be. Such ambition!
There’s a cut-off point in one’s prose – you can always tell when someone is young, but there’s a threshold where the age could be anywhere from 23 to 40. May as well revel in the ambiguity. Even if it’s unfair: to distance ourselves distinct from these critical-fact-of-stories, like age and environment, sex, whatever else – it’s fun to be amorphous since you’re definitely shoved into form when you walk outside. This was one of the original ethos of the netsurfers of yore, “meatspace no more.”
Anyway, I think journalling is a horrible idea (for most people) and wouldn’t recommend it. There’s this idea that you’ll somehow track your goals, make some good progress, iron out your neurotic kinks – but what actually happens is you write yourself into submission. And intensify the unstable parts, fixate instead of fix things.
Journalling is horrible, but writing is nice if you make sure you restrain yourself. What better way to restrain yourself than to write online, until you become depraved enough to break those restraints anyway? The restraints found in tying your real identity with your writing are far too great. It’s commendable those who bother to attach an identity and work in that nightmare-mode situation. See, with a pseudonym you can eject whenever you want, and if anyone hates you it doesn’t matter because they can’t find and destroy you.
What would it mean to link pseudonyms together? Nothing much, most likely. I originally hopped on this place with a username of “kazuhisa” because I enjoyed the rare readings of the kanji within (和仙) and the meaning of the characters themselves; harmony, hermit. 和 is probably my favorite Chinese character because it evokes a simple destination: matching each grain (禾) for each smiling mouth (口).
A lot of the articles I wrote under “kazuhisa” exists on this site today. You can feel the ambition leaking out the pages for some of them. Most of the things I wrote I vaguely believe in today, but more of a disinterested “yeah I guess” rather than a resolute “absolutely” sort of thing. Maybe not. You can tell it’s an article from “kazuhisa” when it’s long paragraphs and a lot of capitals and maybe some broken rendering. I had to bulk convert it from “org mode” to markdown.
The “kazuhisa” arc ended in deletion because I didn’t yet understand there’s nothing here. Making a website – actually, doing anything online is the sphinx without riddle. There is no answer. There is no solution other than walking away. But I just didn’t understand that.
Eventually I came back as “faustian” – the writing in this arc is more short-bursty and dejected, if anything. There’s definitely was a passion but that passion was lost halfway through.
Let’s be clear: there never was an overarching purpose. If there was, it was flimsy at best. These pseudonyms are chosen on a whim.
Eventually I deleted that one too, because I still didn’t “get it” yet – that there’s nothing to do here. So I made a codeberg account and had another username there and an obscure blog for a bit, before deleting that.
So, as a side note, is writing online really that much better, restraints and all? I don’t think so. But there’s nothing else to do if you want to waste time on the internet. Pretty stupid, isn’t it?
Once more I came back for a short stint as “vivere” because it’s still enjoyable to write things as a way to pass time even if it is a void. I deleted that one too after interacting too much. I don’t think any of the writing on that exists on this site.
Now I am here again, first as “taketwo” and now as “siqu” – pinyin for 四取, “four takes” – four usernames, four takes. In this “arc” it’s a little more “reserved” and ambiguous, solemn. Again, there’s no purpose other than musings, but even musings have been boring lately. So here’s a confession instead.
Now, with all of these credentials, so I admit again that there’s nothing here, the same as any other people online and real life. Transience is the rule of the day. When I first started on neocities and leading up to today, so many faces changed – if not entirely, well, they aren’t the same person anymore.
I am not sure if you could ever find anything on here. As long as you understand that, then you can make your website about whatever you want, and whether people follow or not doesn’t matter. All we got here are illusions that you’re doing something.
With this confession I have reached 200k published words on this site. Does it mean anything, or fixed anything? In some ways, I suppose. In other ways, I just see a big archive which doesn’t have a coherent theme. Coherent themes are what makes things interesting. This is why one always has an “about” page. This is why people love dates attached, so they can at least construct a timeline.
Anyway, the most honest conversations you’ll ever have are with people who need nothing from you and will have nothing to do with you. This is probably why it’s amusing to be here: a chance to have a one-sided conversation the same as a bar, but believe me, it’s much better to be at the bar. Probably. Even if alcohol is disgusting.
Anyway, I’m not sure if anything was learned. If I had to construct an overarching theme, it’s trying to build a house out of a rotted tree. I mean, that’s why I wrote how this site isn’t designed to last because whatever is here will slowly be worth nothing anyway. And that’s a good thing, actually.
To be fair, I tried building such things long before neocities, but you have to understand that human nature is fickle. And whatever you’re building, if it doesn’t involve a transaction, you’re likely alone by the end of it. If you cannot accept people as they are right in front of you – or yourself, for that matter – well, you’ll eventually learn to, because that’s what you’re going to get. Calvinism is real in more ways than not. More often than not you have to watch people destroy themselves.
Still, when you have no one to message and nothing to talk to, writing and publishing online is a good compromise. As long as you ignore how writing such things doesn’t change anything much. And if you aren’t changing, you’re either regressing or turning catatonic.
Anyway, these are good things, even if it sounds like a downer. Because, to be clear, whether you are in person or over the wire, it’s still this weird state of sharing a disjointed existence. Ultimately I learned to not keep in contact with anyone because it’s more burden.
Yeah, I mean, after enough writing, you realize that action is what matters, and there’s little action in conversations in the corner of this web. I won’t deny that with the properly formatted essay you could change some life courses – but I’m not sure whatever I write here affects others for the better.
Ultimately it’s really strange to live in this way. But other ways of living are too stressful for what you get. I mean, I used to understand, but I don’t understand anymore. Majority of stress comes from other people. Emotional blackmail, if anything. And if not that, then eggshells can come most unsuspectingly.
What’s an uplifting way to end these? I mean, what did you expect: the whole point here was to blow off steam between all the pseudonyms. Maybe it worked, maybe it didn’t. Maybe it helps to write to organize your thoughts, but that implies you think your thoughts are valuable.
There’s this idea that some thoughts are valuable, but it seems most thoughts aren’t that great. It’s probably why I’m so delete happy. He who writes thoughtlessly ultimately believes his thoughts are worthless: I agree, and it’s better this way.
It is ACTION which matters, always. Thoughts become action, you may protest – sure, but when has that ever worked for you?
It seems one does things conversely to how much one thinks. Risk-taking requires a suspension of thinking if you ever want to get over the hump.
You can think all you like and revisit all your worries and things, but after a good while doing that under many names I can assure you it is just rearranging the puzzle pieces: it’s not like it’ll magically be solved after. If anything you may rip up the pieces in the process.
So, there you go. In conclusion, it probably isn’t worth the time, but your being/essence drove you to do such things anyway.
I wish I could say, “it’s been fun” but with the given track record even if I delete this account I’ll make another one. Oh well.
I hope you have a wonderful life.