“I used to be real interesting…”

The title is a status update I posted in Facebook a few days ago. Since you bothered to pop in to read (thank you, by the way!), perhaps you wonder what was so interesting about me before, or why I am not interesting anymore.

In truth, I’m just about as interesting in person as I ever was, but my online presence has changed. Facebook itself is part of that. Admit it, it is not a good venue for revealing interesting parts of oneself. Facebook asks the question, “What’s on your mind?” instead of “How are you?” But no one really wants to know either. Most people just don’t want to know what you really think, or how you really are. They’re more comfortable with funny video links, or songs, or shared inspirational posters.

Indeed, the most innocuous subjects or comments can create offense, so most people I know avoid even those. I’ve seen it hundreds of times. I’ve offended others with innocuous comments, myself! I’ve also seen bullying, threats, shaming, attempts to ruin reputations, petty fights… and I’ve seen all that between family members. So much for using Facebook as a forum to become closer. It certainly can work that way, but it does not always.

This kind of crap doesn’t really go away in my Facebook world, even though I’ve very deliberately kept my “friends” list very short. All it takes is someone looking to be offended who reads someone else’s thread, and off we go!

The easiest way to avoid that kind of drama is to stick with what people want: pictures of kitties and puppies and babies, recipes, links to videos, and the like. I censor myself more all the time. And in shifting in this direction, revealing less about how I think, I provide a very boring face to the Facebook world. I even bore myself.

In addition, over the last year or so, my focus for writing has shifted to Catbird Quilt Studio. My life is very simple, and I do spend much of my discretionary time on my quilts. This fact, also, may make me seem very narrow and dull.

In fact, however, I think about a lot of different things. I just don’t say much about most of it.

When Jim and I started this blog, it was to create a venue where we could talk about anything we wanted. We wanted no undue censorship, other than that we would provide through our own natural decency. The title of the blog is broad to include the broad range of subjects we study and think about. But recently neither of us has spent a lot of time focused on Our View.

Well, I have a few things to say. And though I won’t be the arbiter of whether I am, or just used to be, “interesting,” I look forward to expressing some parts of me that I’ve censored too much for too long.

 

 

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