Hallo kids.
It's been a while I know. Primarily, a change in life situation, but also my guru de blogging, Miscriant, and newer bloggers, The Lost Fimir, The Demon Gin and Random Nerdery do it rather better.
But, I do have something to muse on, and, cliché as it is, it relates to New Year's Resolutions.
I don't propose to go over well trodden ground. These are arbitrary promises based on a quirk of dating, and often not stuck to. I know that. So do you.
But this year, I've been set two, which actually relate to the same thing, and done one myself. However, as is so often the case with me, they are actually one.
At a very refined new year's dinner party, I was asked by one of my friends if I had any new year resolutions. I answered that I had been given one to try and live up to, but before I could say further, two other friends chipped in to ask if it was to stop posting 'woe is me' Facebook statuses.
They had a point.
I'm a reasonably well behaved Facebook and Twitter user. I don't post what I had for lunch, I don't use txt spk. I don't rant about work directly, or other people by name. I don't invite people to games endlessly, or update my status every half hour. I keep memes to a meme-imum. (sorry). I only tag myself and people I know don't mind being tagged in photos. I do not status-jack (a practice whereby two mutual friends will have an often off-topic chat with each other in the comments under a status. It's untidy, and the best medium for that is messenger or chat. And I keep being notified of every step in a conversation I don't need to know about. Stop it, all of ya.)
My statuses are self indulgent. But that is kind of the point of social media.What started as a desire to be able to comment on stuff without being explicit in a public forum has led to a tendency to be allusive and, if not cryptic, then certainly obfuscatory in my online oratory. I've been a Facebook user long enough to remember when every status had to start with "[name] is..." which means I still try and treat my name as the start of the status and refer to myself in the third person. I even have traditions, the most notable of which is the "was brought to you by.." status on 31 December, which in all honesty started as a way of me trying to remember the highlights of increasingly full years, but does seem to fall into the trap of being self congratulatory status, which is a Facebook sin.
But, BUT, my one true Facebook and Twitter sin is self deprecating or 'down' statuses. These are considered poor form, the worst kind of attention seeking, looking for validation from close or distant friends, which is often followed by a feeble thank you or by dismissal of things being as bad as the status suggests.
On this basis, I agree my friends were right to highlight this, and my plan is to post no more of these.
But, before I do, or rather don't, do this, I do want to explain what I was doing. Because, although I concede that the public nature of the statuses and posts meant they appeared to be as above, it wasn't what I was doing. I was shouting into the void.
Those close to me know I struggle with my self esteem. I am naturally aware of my own brilliance, and, if I can base anything on the people who surround me (if by a man's friends ye shall know him and all that), then I'm pretty special. But my psyche is conditioned by years of trying to avoid becoming arrogant to self criticise so I don't become a show off. I also over think. It started because most of my social skill is learned, and a conscious effort. I therefore had to turn over most social events in my head again and again to ensure I hadn't missed anything or caused offence.
I can't stop, and in the space of your own head, if you're so convinced and conditioned to find problems, when there are none, you create them. You miss out on enjoying the moment.
It was suggested a few years ago that I try shouting into the void. The theory is simple - you break the cycle in your head by saying out loud to a sympathetic audience what's in your head. It becomes smaller by breaking out from your head. You realise it wasn't a big deal. The sympathetic audience knows and understands your crazy, but isn't required to comment on it (quite the reverse) so, if like me, you're an extrovert, or, as a John puts it, the locus of your personality is external, you have presented it to an audience, not just said it out loud to yourself and then put in back in your head.
It works. If any of the above sounds like you, I'd honestly suggest trying it. Sadly, I broke my version of it. I started overthinking who my sympathetic audience was, feeling guilty about it. So the void I started to shout into became the slightly depersonalised, or rather distanced forum of social media. Still an audience, still saying 'out loud', but not requiring of comment, and in a safe place.
Which might have worked. If I'd told anyone that was what I was doing. Instead, I came across as the more self indulgent, whining moron I usually look down on. And ended up bending the ear of real life friends more than ever.
So, new plan. I can't promise I won't feel low again, or get the urge to shout into the void. But I'm going to try not to bend everyone's ear about it. Or post on Facebook. Or twitter. Or sit there fretting until I say something really dumb to someone special.
Instead, I'm going to do follow a piece of advice given by one of wisest people I know, and do one thing:
"RELAX "
I am currently ridiculously happy. In addition to having fantastic friends, a brilliant family, and a roaring social life, doing things I like to do, I'm now finally thinking positively about the future. Those who know me, know why, and who. And I like to keep some things private, so that's as far as I'll go.
So, I'm going to try enjoying it. If I feel myself drifting, overthinking, frowning, I'm going to laugh at myself. Because with any rational diagnosis or assessment, I'm happy, successful, unaccountably popular, and actually jeopardising that by worrying about it rather than anything else. I've come close lately. That needs to change.
Will I avoid being down again, or overthinking? I doubt it. But I need a better way of dealings with it.
So no more shouting into void. I'm going to relax, and be happy instead. Hopefully, I've caught it just in time before it caused too much trouble.
So, I do have a new year's resolution. It's not the stopping of the Facebook statuses. It's not a specific objective. It therefore might just work.
Relax. Be happy. Enjoy.
Challenge accepted.
Happy 2014.
