Beginning the New Year with a New Outlook.

So I have waved goodbye to Livejournal, I blamed the falling numbers of people using the site as a reason that I didn’t write in it any more. But that isn’t the entire story.

When I read some of the last posts I wrote to Livejournal in 2011, I feel that I was a much more open and honest. There were links to videos and why I wanted to share them, news stories and my take on them and general insight of my thoughts and feelings that I became afraid to show too often on Twitter.

140 characters is a blessing and a curse, keeps the message simple, but not always meaningful. I enjoy talking and sharing viewpoints and that can be very difficult with so few words, people get the wrong end of the stick so easily.

I made my Twitter plain, polite and maybe a little too dull. I still use it more than any other social service because I do love its instantaneous atmosphere, here’s what you and I are doing or thinking right now.

The problem with always being in the here and now, is there’s no pause…no reflection. This feels like a problem not just for me but society in general, technology is always trying to make us more “connected”. Yet we can sometimes feel more disconnected than ever before.

I can think of two reasons why I dressed into plain clothes on Twitter than originally had on LJ. The first one is privacy, as it became apparent at beginning of this decade that social media companies were going to examine, sell and share our personal information I became much more cautious.

The second is a fear of misunderstanding or rejection, on Twitter there are some users who seemed to only post negatively or attention-seeking. I worried about being painted with a similar brush if I tweeted about how upset I was. Also in 2011/2012 I was job searching and knew that some of my social circle felt I wasn’t doing enough to get myself out of unemployment. Often responses when I felt down often had a pinch of “get a job” about them, so I generally stopped writing about my feelings unless they were positive.

Today, things are different. I have been doing paid work for about a full-year and the experiences that work has given me make me feel like I am now allowed to enjoy my free time and express myself once more. However I could not do that on Twitter, imagine trying to write this entry into a couple of tweets!

This brings me on to a final reason, which was a wish to avoid causing upset and misunderstanding, there will be subjects and opinions I want to talk about that I know some will not agree with me on. I felt I could not share them as much on Twitter because of the limitations of the platform. Here at least I can lay it all down and present it more fully. I don’t expect people to always agree with me, and I wouldn’t want them to either. I think that this is a more vibrant and exciting world when we all dance to different tunes.

However I must stress that disagreement does not equal friendship incompatibility, I personally enjoy the opportunity to hear and understand why another will think and come to a different conclusion.

Knowledge is the key to progression and happiness. I think that by being honest and open about my opinions and self, that those of you reading will gain a better insight into who I am, and perhaps I will again too.