meet the islanders
Thanks to xIre for sharing I wish I had a good answer. It's her response to the following email I sent her, which referenced posts of hers including Solomon's Paradox, I have my moments, and starting over:
Hi xIre,
Thanks for putting a name to Solomon's Paradox, then floating third person journaling as a solution for it! It's been fun starting to explore myself and even some online identities like this one through that self-detached lens. I also enjoy how the practice tempers the emotional attachment and tension of writing about personal subjects.
Has that journaling or anything else helped with tackling problems as described in posts of yours, such as "I have my moments" and "starting over"? Like you have written, I yearn for satisfying more of my wants over not following through. I also feel a bit uneasy about my blog's direction.
Overall, it feels like change is in the air, but it's up to me to make it happen...
Best,
Imperfect
I hope my somewhat abstract riffs on some of her points do her effort justice.
revisit others' lore
Here's how xIre started her response:
People email me all the time. But the special ones are those that make me think about what I wrote before.
Researching someone's lore is good etiquette. Revisiting it with them can work even better. Both exercises in tandem powered some of my most memorable and heartfelt online exchanges via this platform and others.
Sifting through someone's entire corpus can reveal a version of them that few bother to discover. Their words spill the tea on their origins, life story, worldly perspective, and more. However, this endeavor can take too much time and effort when faced with extensive collections and busy lives.
Gathering several bits and pieces of them is a way cheaper, yet still underrated process. Embedding those fragments into structures meaningful to them can still yield outsized results.
While communications that stand out rely on other facets too, the above strategies helped me enough times in a row to strongly recommend them for your own craft. May you put forth the energy to make people and their expressions feel read whenever possible.
on solomon's paradox and journaling
I can't believe it took me as long as it did to put a name to Solomon's paradox. It posits that advice given to others works well, but not advice applied within. xIre had these answers relating her journaling practice to the paradox:
Has my journaling helped? Absolutely. My personal journaling has helped me actually go through with what I wanted to do.
It's like I'm writing down a script of what I want to do or what I have in mind and I actually follow through with it 95% of the time when it is written down in analog form.
Like you have written, I yearn for satisfying more of my wants over not following through.
So, this is what I do personally. I save important things for my journal. And I save the wishy-washy thoughts, or the possibly broody-sounding ones, for this blog. It's not just one part of my persona...
Even having followed her method of writing out wants and thoughts (albeit via first person journaling), I haven't nearly accomplished the rate of success she advertises. Perhaps it doesn't help that my analog journal entries aren't strictly dedicated to what's most consequential in my life either? Don't get me wrong, I'm aware of ideas like "comparison is the thief of joy" and that there's no single correct way to coordinate this activity well. But harking back to how I mentioned that "it feels like change is in the air", maybe switching things up via third person perspective and tighter topical constraints would help me commit to my stated preferences?
As for how I have been approaching third person journaling so far, it has felt more like a gathering of friends featuring various online and offline identities of mine. As in, I treat this blog as a tangible friend with its own personal name. I would then treat my presences on other online platforms or in offline spaces similarly. Some have found wild success and enjoyment in certain aspects that others have not or have yet to experience for whatever reason. Some seek recovery from having adopted unwarranted holding patterns that they have overcome prior. My best guess for adopting this writing style is an attempt to inject encouragement and possibility into parts of me that lack it. And while you might be reading this paragraph with a raised eyebrow and cause for concern, I don't think I would have sent the above email if not for it. Here's hoping it helps me in more ways than just that.
pockets of identity
Personally, I would like much more self-contained pockets of my identity. I'm not entirely opposed to blending them in with each other where appropriate either, like offering ferries or airplanes between the little islands they represent. Although, even if I could combine every persona of mine (let alone others' impressions of each) into a single digital presence, I probably wouldn't want to for multiple reasons.
Sometimes it's nice to connect via one or more shared interests without letting possible complications get in the way. People develop such hyper-detailed imagery and associations of online peers from such few bits of information. Curate the right profile picture, bio, and hot take to get yourself a front seat ticket to the attention of who knows how many people. Some believe you at face value while others see through your ruse. Some will crush on you while others will despise your guts. The thing is that there's only so much to be done when it comes to controlling others' autonomy. Hence, you carefully craft your image and its connections toward what you seek, then learn to gracefully surf over whatever unsavory waves come your way. Then again, you're here because you love playing the game with or without anyone else's attention, right?
Other times, full transparency doesn't seem worthwhile compared to the freedom that separating personas allows: play, imagination, and experimentation. Like how musical artists can adopt so many public or private aliases to adapt their style, people can adopt so many different names to tune interactions with those around them. Chances are that you're not walking into any old bar and divulging just about everything you possibly can of yourself to whoever is there. You select parts of yourself that align well with not only the situation you're in, but the kinds of outcomes you want to manifest.
flow like water
xIre describing her blog as going with the flow reminds me of how water doesn't worry over where it flows. It just flows according to the forces acting on it and the contours that surround it, if any. With how reliant on replies my writing has become, it's a big product of its environment compared to arriving out of the blue. That could be a feature instead of a bug to continue to explore via this specific persona, while others tap deeper into my soul.
Could prioritizing persistence and survival in the long run over direction in the short run get this project where I want it to go? Maybe its destiny is increasing reps of successful water cycles over getting from point A to point B. Should catastrophe strike somewhere in the process, that could be a massive catalyst for growth if handled with a positive attitude and social context anyhow. If I haven't cultivated an ecosystem here conducive to overall flourishing or that specific rebounding, what's stopping me from doing so?