then that last post was the one-sided rant at the end of the night after drinking a few too many. My wise friend rightly said, in part:
More to my point is those are relatively fresh relationships, perhaps worth a little more kid glove time than you would spend on me or xxx with whom you have ample history. NV was clearly an emotional experience for you, and this feels, way over here in my admitted ignorance and separation from the context, like something of an emotional over-reaction on the heels of a really emotionally rewarding set of experiences. In particular, the “facile bullshit” and “disingenuous” strikes me as angry and, potentially, needlessly harmful to new friendships.
He’s right… something has me by the heart. It has opened me up but left me vulnerable in a way I’m not handling very well. While I believe a circle of friends has to be capable of sustaining one of their own storming out mad and returning sheepishly, it might have been a bit soon to subject new friends to the full mercurial force that is me, and a couple of people I alluded to in my post didn’t deserve to what I vented out. I apologize.
I’m afraid to even look at the comments on that piece, so I probably won’t for a while.
Chris,
I totally hear you on this. The emotional confusion after NV is something I also struggle with (even during the event oddly). This has as much to do with my own issues as the pressure of understanding one another’s full range of ideas, sarcasms, etc. through a mediated PLE, as it were. It is just funny to me how clear you’ve made everything for me in this post, as compared to my attempts to piece together a conversation on Twitter. This is the space I return to for answers. I love the blog, and while I would miss many a person on Twitter, I personally would miss them even more on the blog. It is more like writing letters than sending telegrams, space to explain, build divine metaphor, and connect a bit more slowly.
Just breathe and blog on. I learned a long time ago to (a) not take myself seriously and (b) never take stuff on the internet personally.
The bonds made in person at NV are way way way more important than the pflaff that happens online.
peace
I wish I could just advise you to lighten up, but I know all to well how it feels to put something out and be dismayed by the response for whatever reason. I wish I was able to shrug that stuff off, I tell myself that’s what I should be doing, but that very human response can be powerful and persistent.
I’ve been on the other end all too often as well, sending off some remark with blithe assurance it will be taken lightly only to learn it offended, disrespected, or even hurt the person on the other end somehow.
Wish I could make sense of it… I do try to learn from my mistakes, but I also value a bit of juice in my give and take. So far my bruises haven’t been serious enough smarten my ass up.
I appreciate your comment more than you know. I realized that I took things way too personally. I assumed a certain perception of who I am and where I’m coming from, things like my shared belief that there is much about this stuff that can’t be taught, that I don’t want to create new monoliths, etc.
When that understanding turned out not to be the case, it felt very personal, as if this group of people that I barely feel qualified to belong to in the first place was reacting with disdain not just to something that I’ve been giving a lot of thought to and sincerely want help with, but to me personally. It triggers all my deep-rooted emotions of insecurity *and* powerful and painful feelings of being alienated from what is the most important part of my network of friends and colleagues.
I’m trying to lighten up– or at least my form of it, which is something like working toward clarity.
[...] Twitter’s like a Pub Conversation 4 chris, Brian, Alan Levine, [...]
Thinking a bit more on it, maybe we shouldn’t strive to lighten up, but try to find a way of naming that yucky sensation without causing more damage, or amping up the intensity, or seeming humourless. Maybe that’s impossible.
The dilemma reminds me of a lot of the issues raised at the ELI Fear 2.0 session. (http://www.teachinglearningresources.com/fear.html) - I don’t think the digital space changes the nature of human emotion, but it does alter the social rhythms pretty dramatically at times. I came out of that session wishing we could take the Fear 2.0 Dream Team’s example and begin working up a rhetoric that allows us to express and deal with fear without letting it stop us from doing what needs to be done.
Isn’t it beautiful that your heart got more space to breathe? Isn’t it beautiful you write these fantastic, human, posts and your friends all come and “sit” with you and your thoughts?
BEE YOU TEE FUL!