the poison, the rot

Honestly starting to question if I want to be online at all.

For the past few days, my focus has primarily been on offline endeavours. While my head isn’t in what I’d describe as a healthy place — I think that ship has long since sailed and won’t ever be returning to harbour — I definitely had it above water, so to speak. There was room for improvement, but I didn’t feel all…compressed and scrunched-up, soulwise. Boredom was a slight problem (but there again, it always is, even at the best of times), but otherwise I was mostly okay.

I step back online, and within a few hours of operating within the circles I’m in (largely out of lack of knowing what else to do, truth be told), I start feeling horrific again. Tears, anger, annoyance, and zero patience for what may be innocent mistakes. And I’m right back to feeling like a worthless outsider, to boot.

This…will require fixing.

It’s not being online as a whole — I like keeping in contact with friends, I love to code, I love to spend hours with my eyes glued to tutorials, and I love organising and planning different static sites. But there’s a certain…realm…I guess…I kind of have to keep up with, due to the content I create, and honestly, it and the majority of people in it, their careless actions and flippant attitudes have just crushed me.  (And I do realise I’m being vague here; I have my reasons. Chances are you know precisely which sphere of the net I’m speaking of, but if you don’t…don’t worry. What it is isn’t really important; what it does to my is what matters here.)

I want eyes on my sites, but I don’t want to be under the constant eye of a digital equivalent of a homeowner’s association with a penchant for favouritism.
I want to make friends and forge connections, but I don’t want to be flavour of the month to someone and snarked about behind my back when they get bored. I don’t want to be carefully put into a place where I can’t defend myself from outright lies.
I want to create, but I don’t want to force myself to fit into a mould that crushes my heart to do so.
I want something real, not just lip service and an “affiliate” link.

This should be fun. This crap? Is not fun.

I think it’s time to quietly just step away from the whole poison lot of it. Maybe it’ll cost me visitors. Maybe that’s actually a small price to pay for not feeling like dirt on the bottom of someone’s shoe and stress headaches. I won’t feel this way in all communities I ever participate in…right?

Maybe it means I’ll always be alone, no matter how much I yearn for that connection.
Maybe even being alone would be better than trying to keep myself from falling apart in a mean place.

Or…well, no. Because I’m not alone on the Wired; I have real, genuine, decades-old friendships that with people that I would honestly die for.

When I was a little girl, I could play for hours and hours with my school friends. I was more than happy writing little storybooks just to distribute amongst them, I loved all the made-up worlds we spent hours building together; I didn’t feel lesser because I didn’t have an audience.

I shouldn’t feel lesser now, just because the only people who ever see the things I create are my friends. If only three people ever read Akayoroshi, that won’t make it unworthy or a waste of time.

I would rather feel real appreciation and joy in a tiny world, than tear myself to shreds in a huge one for the merest chance of someone giving the things I cherish and throw my whole heart into just an idle glance. If I created and played just for the sake of joy and the sake of my friends as a child, I can damn well do the same thing now as an adult — and the friends I have now are worth a thousand times more than any I had as a child, to boot.