My First Post On Bear (Hello)
This is my first post on Bear. Hello!
I have had a hankering to write publicly for some time now. I have had a habit of writing at least 500 hand-scrawled words in a journal daily for many years now, but the practice is too insular to fully satisfy my writing interests. I think being forced to consider the perspective of another human, or maybe two or three or more other humans, would do something good to my writing, and maybe myself, in some vague way.
This is not my first blog. I maintained a Tumblr account quite actively from the years 2011 to 2021 or so and wasted many precious hours of my adolescence doing so. I would reblog anime gifs that I would never look at again and occasionally post personal updates about my life written (sometimes "crytyped") in lowercase. I did so for hours a day, mostly dissociated, and somehow managed to amass thousands of pages worth of content. I did not make any friends there. The usernames I saw with such frequently that I can still recall them today never became anything more than usernames.
I am skeptical of the idea that the Internet can make people feel more connected to others. In theory I believe it, but I have never experienced it myself. I do not believe words on a screen can comfort. Perhaps "emotionally connecting over the Internet" is an act that requires a level of imagination that I am not capable of. (If you ask me to picture an apple in my head, it is plain and flickers in and out of existence.) I might know rationally that there is a human somewhere in the world sending me a message through the words I read, but at the end of the day I'm still just in my bedroom with an electrical box in my lap, alone.
But I think something is different this time. I am a fully grown adult human with actual ideas of my own now. I have lots I want to write about. What's the harm? I like this community, I like what I've read here, and I want to contribute something. I'm almost shocked by this, but reading the random diary entries I come across on this site actually has made me feel less alone in my day-to-day life. I'd like to contribute to this environment with my own thoughts and day-to-day experiences as well, and I hope at least one person will find them interesting.
I also wrote this on a bunch of cough medicine, so take it with a grain of salt, please. Thank you.