the first thing i want to talk about here is the perpetual fear i have of being myself, and the thing is i know that for me it's definitely a learned fear, a paranoia that has been chipping away at myself ever since i had more interaction with people online than people in the real world.

i know this to be true because towards the end of high school i had made total peace with being myself, weird but friendly with everyone, a pretty open person, not really worrying about other people's opinions because i knew everyone had their own insecurities. fast forward many years later though, i am now very taciturn and closed off, for fear that expressing my honest opinions will make people hate me - not because my opinions are terrible, but because any disagreement is dis-allowed.

there's so much pressure when posting on social media and making friends through those sites. reblogs and retweets make everything feel too public - you never know what will be reblogged where, and bring a flood of randoms who don't know you deliberately misinterpresting everything and butting into the conversation. so you have to watch your words & make sure you have disclaimers behind what you say. there's no good faith assumption.

not that i even really want to be getting into heavy dialogues like that most of the time! in fact i'm trying to move away as much as possible from any sort of discourse (i fully believe it's a destructive addiction that's bad for the brain - maybe a sub-addiction of internet addiction?) i just want to be able to chill and be myself without worry of scrutiny. it should be normal and accepted that everyone has different opinions and you don't have to agree on everything - or even most things - to get along with people.

the habits that being in these circles have ingrained in me are hard to shake. even now on a tiny website in the corner of the internet on an anonymous account, i feel nervous writing these things. in the past i've tried making accounts on sites like tumblr, twitter, telling myself that with a totally fresh pseudonym i'm totally free to do what i want, but i always fell into the same paranoid patterns.

looking back, i think you'd need a really thick skin to try and fearlessly navigate the waters of any of those sites. my sincere hopes are that having my own website will finally allow me to freely be myself and say what i want - after all, nobody is forced to be on here reading this!

i could go on and on about any of these topics, and from conversations with people i know many, many people relate, but i'll stop here because i would like to go back to coding now. i just needed to get this out there.