According to two of my readers, this blog is ‘too negative’ and too civilised’. I think that both observations are true.
A lot of the writing I do on this blog is corrupted by a sort of PowerPoint thinking, that is, that what gets written here should serve some didactic purpose, and should be presented in clear and uncertain terms. While one might observe that what actually gets written does neither, what I am referring to is the process by which my words (or the words of others) finally end up on the screen.
I work in an environment full of antiseptic and genteel crappiness with a certain emphasis on predictability and uniform production, and it is hard to shake this off when I sit down to post items. The same anxieties that compel me to produce for my employer get transferred to posting here. Drifting from news site to blog site to news site aimlessly in the search for posting inspiration, foremost in my mind is the need to find material required to produce another post, which inevitably results commenting on items de nos jours in a manner that is both predictable and genteel.
As I am conscious and perhaps resentful when writing of the constraints imposed by the working day, this can find its way into the posts, resulting in the negativity discerned by one of my readers. Now, there is nothing particularly wrong with being negative, particularly when the world these days is so awful; but what is unforgivable is to be a whinger. Reading back over some of the longer posts, there certainly does seem to be a fair amount that could be described as random grousing.
As for the ‘civilised’ nature of the site: this comment was made by a person who knows me, and probably notices the contrast between the relatively polite tone of my posts here and my foul-mouthed utterances in carne trémula. This is also the result of workplace conditioning.
There’s anything wrong with being either negative or civilised per se, but when the net effect is dullness, well, that’s just dull. To add this, I’ve decided to be looser in my approach to posting. I shall chew through the oatmeal shackles of goal-oriented reasoning and spend more time wallowing in the jelly of free association. Aye. That’s it all right.
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