left a note on my bedroom window:
Ever since then, I've had the nagging feeling someone is watching me.By way of explanation, I would like to say:
"I haven't been posting lately because of my codependent need to read the latest posts of everyone on my sidebar list before I can expect you to read my latest post. This usually takes about 2 hours and causes anxiety that you didn't create. I feel a strong need to express myself without worrying about the impact I'm having or the expectation that either of us needs to comment.
As I approach the age where the government is going to take on a big chunk of the burden of my health care costs, I'm working on letting go of several of my pathologies (OCD, Co-dependence, anxiety) and just posting freely any nonsense that flows forth. I don't expect anyone to read. I just need to do it...
(a very round-about way of saying, "I feel like someone is watching me and I'm working on not caring)."
Well someone did stop by to read. And yes, we are watching, but only with as much love as your 15 year old beau. And we'll knock and say hi, too.
ReplyDeleteAt least one -- and I think probably many -- of your readers care about you which means that you express yourself freely, not in some artificial way because some vestigal rule about being a "good girl" says you must act a certain way. Blog when you feel like it, and don't when you don't wish to.
ReplyDeleteI loved reading this, as much as I enjoy all of your expressions. Don't deprive the world of your unique perspective. And many people have always been watching. We are your adoring audience.
ReplyDeleteyes, we are watching you. with a loving, beneficent gaze, awaiting the wonder that is you, and the wonders you create.
ReplyDeleteyou have been missed.
please don't deprive us any longer!
It may be admirers watching, many of us enjoy what you have to say.I always enjoy seeing your comments.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what to make of this, Kass. Frankly, it might have gone over my head.
ReplyDeleteIs this "co-dependent" a real person, or some kind of psychological alter-ego we're talking about? I ask this because you write "I've had a feeling ever since that someone is watching me." which makes me wonder if this co-dependent is imaginary.
Or is there an actual flesh-and-blood human being who won't let you write? If that's the case, get out of that relationship immediately!
I have less time to write than I used to (in fact, I may have to cut this short) If I have something ambitious I want to post, I just have to forgo reading the sidebar blogs until I'm done. As for comments on other people's blogs, I have a weird system I use which determines when and if I leave a comment. I rather not disclose the system, as some (though not you) may decide to manipulate such a system.
Anyway, this was a pretty provocative post. That alone is a good reason to keep tuned into you.
It's always a delight to read anything you write, Kass.
ReplyDeleteThe note is great, how thrilling it must have been to find it.
As for your need to read every blog on your sidebar before posting: I know exactly how you feel.
Nice to see your back writing.... I feel it is your blog, post when you want to and post what ever comes into your thoughts at that moment.
ReplyDeleteI read off and on during the day the blogs I follow. Sometimes I comment and sometimes I don't it all depends.
cheers, parsnip
i understand the pervasiveness of that "someone's watching" feeling. i was stalked for a while online, and very creeped out by the experience. on my new blog, i dont check people's post or comments on my posts as often as i used to. i dont have notifications of any sort sent to me; and my list of blogs that i follow has no automatic updating...so i have take the time to go look, if i'm interested. it short-circuits some of the compulsive quality.
ReplyDeletein any case, i am always interested in your writing, kass.
i've gotten too used to Facebook, I need a "like" button on blogs so I don't feel the need to comment on every one i read. i was pleasantly surprised to see this.
ReplyDeleteWell, there is work I should be doing right now(but I am very good at getting work done, so...no real harm), but seeing that you had posted again made me pause. I was pleased I would be reading something from you again.
ReplyDeleteActually reading the post really made me smile. As a schizophrenic,I can really get behind the "someone is watching me" thing :-). And then when I do think that, I also think, & just where does my culpability lie? Guess what, nowhere(at least not in this). Go with that. Post when you feel like it & read when you feel like it. It is marvelously freeing. ~Mary
Hi Kass, you raise a problem that's been bothering me a lot of late. I concentrate on my posts and visiting all those who visit me. I try to get round to the rest, but not everyday. I don't know what the top answer to this conundrum might be, but I do know that most of all I would like to read your posts - this one, for instance: the morning would have been poorer without it.
ReplyDeleteI too suffer in this regard but necessity has forced me to get over myself. I used to comment far more than I do now but I was exhausting myself. There is a quid pro quo mentality online and the desire to reciprocate is not a bad thing generally as long as it’s done genuinely—I buy you a pressie, you send me a thank you card—but my example really underlines the problem; it’s etiquette (or netiquette as they like to call it). There’s a place for good manners and that’s round the dinner table. I read my first book by Stephen King a few weeks back. I wonder when he’s going to read one of mine, That’s sounds ludicrous but fair’s fair, isn’t it? A wee while back my wife bought me a tablet since I wasn’t very happy with the Kindle she’d bought me a few months before that. The tablet, I discovered, was far more versatile and I started using it for other things. Every morning after breakfast I pick up my tablet read my e-mails, my RSS feeds, then my tweets and finally I check Facebook. Anything of interest, like this post, I stick in Evernote (wonderful little application—I recommend it wholeheartedly especially if, like me, you work on multiple machines) and get to later; basically I create a little to-do list. So I scan everything but I only read a handful. And that’s the only way I can cope and even then, if, like Dave King has been doing for a long time now, one of my friends insists on posting daily, well there’s no way in hell I can comment on every poem he posts. One of the reasons I cut down my posts was to reduce the burden on my readers. At the start I was posting around 7000 words a week and that’s a lot of reading. A couple of my friends only posted once a week and I found myself looking forward to the weekend when they would post and that’s what I wanted people to feel about my post: Oh good, it’s Sunday lunchtime, Jim’ll have a new post up. Wonder what he has to say.
ReplyDeleteOK, Kass, I re-read your piece. I skimmed through it kind of fast yesterday, as I was about 15 minutes from having to leave to go to work. Apologies for my hastiness.
ReplyDeleteStill, my advice stands, write the post first, and then read the blogs.
Unless you just don't feel like writing, or have writer's block or whatever.
One last question. Someone commented about you having found that letter after many years. Yet you don't say that in your post. Did you just find that letter, or have you kept it all these years?
One last piece of advice: Get Stat Counter. You can see exactly who IS watching you (it may just be a robot advertiser)
I for one always enjoy seeing you here. But it's a good watching!
ReplyDeleteI am sure you will say interesting and evocative things.
ReplyDeleteI stand with those, as a beneficiary, who are delighted you feel the need to express yourself.
ReplyDelete"I haven't been posting lately because of my codependent need to read the latest posts of everyone on my sidebar list before I can expect you to read my latest post" - hahahahaha! I used to do this all the time! And, obviously, judging from my tardiness, I no longer do :)
ReplyDeleteI think there's a lot to be said for instinct. Chances are, if y ou feel like someone's watching you, someone is. And that's just human nature. We watch others all the time. It's not sinister. It's not wrong. We are not at fault for feeling like we are being watched.
I'm interested int his idea that somehow we all have a mass of psychological issues in today's society. Isn't it rather that all the quibbles of human nature have just had sinister sounding names attributed to them to justify a whole new university department's funding (and greater implications)?
Anyhow, you sound just a regular colour of crazy to me - unless of course you want to be a huge fruit-looping-mother, in which case, you, lady, are nuts! And I'm watchig you!
PS - The world and those in it owe us nothing. We can only engender positive change by putting out as much goodness as we can without hoping for returns. Give for giving's sake, but only as much as you can afford to give. No more. Be kind to you xxx
ReplyDeleteKass, I apologize for having missed this and your other recent post. I, too, have a hard time getting to all the writers I want to visit each day. Not driving myself wild and weary is essential and requires a lot of leaving-out. I post only any nonsense that flows freely forth. It is what I have. It really is about following our own truth. Nothing else comes close. xoxo
ReplyDeleteyou made a difference early on for me and i know you don't know that. but i stop by every now and then, not wanting to apply any pressure to you that you should be posting in here because what you have to say matters to me, but i stop by just to see if your light is on. when it's off, that's ok because my own light is often off (and yet, i am home...). so no need to comment, just write, knowing you matter when you write and when you don't.
ReplyDeletesherry
I thoroughly enjoy your writing and your perspective Kass. Writing just makes me feel good. If anyone is watching its icing on the cake but not not needed for me to continue. Reading everyone else's posts is just plain exhausting.
ReplyDelete