Hey, Miss J!

Date: July 12, 2022

Time: 11:14PM

Posting Date: Who knows? Tonight? Tomorrow? Next week?? (Probably tonight…)

A second post? Wow!

Am I alone if I’m in isolation?

I don’t think I am, not anymore. I feel strangely relieved, calm and at peace tonight. I used to think that I would wither up and die without having a connection to the outside world.

All the while I was ignoring what was in the outside world.

Now though, I feel free.

Since I’ve cut myself either intentionally or not off of social media, I expected there to be a massive drop in my mood.

Long gone are the days when I would sit online, aching and crying just to talk to somebody. I never realized until recently that by choosing to keep myself solely online… I was missing out on so much in life.

I’ll address this once, because it’s not that important, but I’d like to have a time stamp up somewhere.

Around 2020 or early 2021, I joined two discord servers. I was hesitant, but a bit excited to be around other writers. My joy with one was really high cos it was very active. That quickly dipped because I couldn’t stand the constant pinging of the alerts…

And I was growing increasingly uncomfortable with what else was being posted on there.

There are two things that should never be brought up in normal discussion – if you want to maintain decent conversation. I don’t go onto an online forum to be stuck looking at the same sewage I see on the news.

I was fed up.

I’ve mentioned before that I have a sometimes very short fuse.

Or maybe I haven’t, I’m not sure. It’s there though, and is something I’m still working on.

So… I voiced an opinion as to why it was good not to have one.

And was banned. Apparently, if you don’t agree entirely with the status quo, you are out.

I also started feeling that I was agreeing by sticking around.

Mind you, this was on the 6^th or 8^th or so, and I just found out today. I just found out tonight. Since the last week or so I haven’t been doing the best. And I honestly was not in the mood to bother booting up Discord at all.

Would you believe what I did after I glossed over it? Yes, gloss. I give things less and less attention the less important they are in my mind’s eye. I’m uncertain as to when things got to be like that.

Maybe the last three years have shown me how its good not to sweat the small things? I used to think that I needed a man to validate my existence too, but those days are passed… mostly.

It still would be nice to have a partner.

After I glossed over this massive wall of text, I sat back… started intently at the bottom line. I sent a response, which was immediately rejected.

I suppose on an online forum, the normal response is to tell someone off, then block them? It’s something so prevalent on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and etc etc. Disagree? Block, because offline you’d have to physically look at the person.

So, I saw that message, got the gist of it.

And I laughed. I haven’t laughed that loud in years. It wasn’t a laugh signaling that my mind had snapped. On the contrary.

I am in my 30s… and am just learning how unimportant it is to lose “internet” acquaintances.

That doesn’t mean I discount or see something useless with them, but I’ve come to terms with learning that it’s better to cherish the friendships you have in person. It’s safer. I can call one of my friends and vent until I change colors (which in and of itself would be odd), and if we disagree – we can’t just block each other.

Literally. I see her almost daily, so we are forced to make amends.

When I deleted my other FB, I had maybe 15 “friends” on it. I barely knew any of them except a few from a Xena chatroom years ago.

I started cutting them off because what they were posting was beginning to make me uncomfortable. Just like when I was on a coworker’s FB and someone posted a picture of a cake from a party…

Why would I be disturbed seeing a cake shaped like a man’s genitals? I have no idea… Aside from the fact that out of all the objects and shapes they could have picked, it was that one.

So I dumped off an FB I’d had since 2009, after doing what I’d call a “death-spiral” in dumping people off my FB list. It was those who didn’t show how much they actually cared about me.

Caring does not mean dropping birthday wishes on me once per year. Bah.

My nephew, in contrast, has over 4,000 on his “friends” list. How many of them does he know?

Ah, Discord… I had a lot of time that was wasted by even going there. I stuck around for the writing sprints.

Now I have an excel sheet that does the exact same thing soo…

That’s that, I suppose.

Do I value the people I’ve left behind?

I suppose as much as they valued me or less? That might be the correct answer.

I didn’t know them personally. None of them, and they certainly didn’t know me.

I’m messy.

I get fussy and whiny.

I’m a wreck most of the time.

But I still have standards.

That’s it for this post.

Till Then!

~ J. Lyst