We are back... and, why oh why did I log on?

We are back. I am sure that, on the flight home, we frightened the flight attendants - dirty, disheveled, lost Clampett family members. It isn't that the Broughton archipelago is uncivilized, necessarily - but its definitely more difficult to keep clothing and self in clean condition. We were happy to see my older daughter again, and I wish she could have come. I meant to go to bed, but realized that I'm really not tired at all. I'm on BC time.

I wrote in a written journal while we were out there. I was going to post it, but now I'm not so sure. Sometimes things really creep you out. What specifically? Well - I read my followed blogs. (And as an irrelevent aside I won't remember to do later, Phillip, one of your honourable mentions is one of my favourites as well - Godspell. I'm far less savvy than you, but I'd rate the Buffy musical as my favourite. It is, as most Joss Whedon things are, ridiculously clever, funny, and yet reverential regarding the characters - it is not a a self-parody. I love it.)

Any way, on to what creeped me out. What really spooked me was to discover one of my read blogs is basically... well, I'd consider it that anyway - stalked. A metablog was started about that blog, in which people discussed without any awareness by the part of the blog's author until she stumbled across it I gather. Now I suppose if something is popular enough to be cultural, then perhaps an analytical journal or even a topical coffee clutch is a more legitimate activity than my first impression of the thing. But some of these people have parsed the details and figured out who the blogger is in real life, and that leaves a bit of a slug trail as I see it (slugs are aplenty in BC forests.)

In fact, I can't be entirely sure my discomfit from seeing this is in any way objective. You see, the site in question goes over everything - including those who post comments. And while I'm not the most frequent leaver of comments, I do leave them - poorly written (admittedly) positive sing-songy things, which I'm sad to say is what I like to leave wherever I go a-commenting (other than Loose Canon at beliefnet.com because CH sometimes drives me crazy with medeival strains of Catholicism that are no more Catholic than is the Rev. Paisley!) I can't say I've ever stopped to wonder what impression that leaves people with, but apparently it comes down to 'creepy' from a passing comment made in one post I read.

Creepy. It is what it is - there's no right or wrong way to interpret what someone writes. Any impression someone takes away from my words is a valid impression, if only his or her own. When you weigh that basic truth with another - that the pen is mightier than the sword - I find that I am hurt, but I'm just not sure how badly. After all, it is easy to conflate any impression at all with general Internet surliness.

But I find I am not hurt so much because I failed to leave a good impression as that I ran under the assumption I have left no impression. Why should a blog comment even be a factor? The likelihood that these folk have probably profile-clicked, read my blog, and had it confirm their feelings is where I feel it.

I've poured a fair bit of what I live like inside into these pages. I know I do not do it as well as many, but for anyone who does it at all, 'creepy' is the worst reaction of all. You would feel better about virtually any other emotion - I could outrage, upset, amuse, or bore someone and be mostly undisturbed by it. I even expect to sometimes do these things.

But that I might actually disturb people? I suppose I've always feared that (I've learned that anyone as bullied as I was in childhood carries this fear - born in trying to find what fault in yourself causes the bullying. Read the words to Vega's Luka if you doubt.)

And I've always been terrified by that specific variety of bullying that plays to this vulnerability. As an adult, I no longer fear being cracked by knuckles, the metal spines of wooden rulers across the back of my head... or just being pushed in the snowbank. I learned long ago that these are empty threats even when carried out, for they rob you of no dignity but the superficial kinds that belong to the surfaces.

But what if the people coming to read everything I've had to pour out read it with malignant intent? Parsing paragraphs to find the things that confirm what they initially hold in contempt about me? People may want to pour meanspiritedness out on the very things that constitute my internal essence, and, oh, they could so easily. I've described my family, the things we've been through, my thinking on everything from cosmology to war. These have not been essays, but typewritten whimsies. I've not critic-proofed (and certainly haven't satire-proofed) anything I've written.

I suppose I've always imagined that what I write is read by no more than three or four people in a circle of folks who all read each other's blogs. And I've further imagined that what I comment isn't in fact read by anyone (including frequently the blogger themselves.)

But it isn't necessarily true, is it? I am not in the vacuum. And while it may well be that only three or four people do ever read here, I am certainly not assured of that. Anyone can get here.

It is not only me that can get hurt. I've tried to be circumspect regarding my family, but they surface here. They would certainly surface if I posted my trip journal in whole or even in part. if contempt is dripped on me, does it also drip on them?

...and I'm left with the worry, do I do this generally? Is there less goodwill out there for me than I imagine there to be? All of the people for whom I have so great an affection in my life, might some of them think of me this way? How wrong do I rub the people I associate with? I admit to the insecurity of a wide-eyed boy whose smile was put out by a ring-lead gang of bullies - that insecurity colours more of my feelings than I'd like. I wish I were tougher. I wish I did not care.

But I do. How do I paint on the cave wall (however inexpertly,) knowing that I'm not the only one who may step back and look, but more importantly, judge? I've made one simple error in judgement - I assumed that if I write from a spirit of good will and spritual generosity, anyone who stumbles across my blog will take it that way. I now realize that nothing binds you, dear reader, to any such covenant at all.

We'll see about the trip journal. I don't know what to think at this point.