I’ve been reading a lot on the forums in Fetlife lately, and it’s been interesting reading. Lots of excellent threads, thoughts, ideas. Things that take me back to philosophy and psychology classes many years ago some of them. Or many late night conversations with friends over the years.

In the past all the ideas swirling around in my head from reading would inspire me to write my own thoughts, contribute to those threads, debate at times.  I seem to be content as of late to be primarily a consumer, a listener, and not to contribute. For one, most everything I’ve said before, somewhere, sometime.

In the past I would often write as part of the process of developing my thoughts on topics, that impetus isn’t there, I pretty much know what I think about a lot of these topics.

I sometimes wonder at the motivations behind why some people write what they do. Especially when they are not bringing anything new or productive to a conversation. Sometimes writing seems to be specifically about supporting friends, or the ideas of others. Sometimes writing seems to be specifically about trying to discredit others in some way. It seems there are a lot of emotionally motivated types of responses, people writing for vengeance, people writing to try to appear different ways to different people. Perhaps a satisfaction in writing something clever, or something witty, something deep, or something disparaging. Thankfully there seem to be a lot of people writing simply because they have something good to say as well. I’ve read a lot that I’ve appreciated, that seems to be written from someones heart and soul because it’s important to them, and not about an outside agenda. In reality I can only guess at motivation, and I think with my background in human psychology, I’m a relatively good guesser. I still don’t assume my guesses are correct, I leave them as open ended pondering in my head. The only person who really knows their motivations are the authors themselves, well, one hopes… some may lack the self insight too I suppose.

I think in part I’ve stopped writing as much because I’d become frustrated with assumptions.  I’ve had people assume some nasty things about me and my motivations behind some of my past words. I haven’t stopped writing to ’save myself’ from being targeted from misassumptions, I’ve just wondered sometimes what the point of sharing thoughts is, when it doesn’t matter your intended purposes in writing, what people are hearing when they listen to your words is different. I write to express things that are important and central to me, if it’s not being heard, I might as well just keep them to my thoughts.

It makes me think about some literature classes where we would dissect bodies of writing, poems, stories, novels, what have you.  So many intellectual insights into what all the meanings in all the words are… the work takes on a life of it’s own. The words become an entity seperate from the author. It stops mattering what the author says they meant, or were writing about… the readers have become the true authors, the intellectuals consuming the work have added layers and layers.  Something bigger is created, yes, but something simple and beautiful is also lost. Lost in translation.

Sometimes in school this could work to your advantage, if percieved as highly intellectual, essay questions written in exams where usually given the ‘benefit of the doubt’ and the professor grading you would assume your answers contained the right answers in them. Write something vague enough and clever enough and obscure enough, and voila… A+. Funny thing is, I’ve never been interested in grades, or even looking clever. Whenever life would start to pull me into the limelight. I’d deliberately take a step or two back into obscurity.

I’ve never liked being the center, I don’t want to be the star, the super author, the ‘winner’.  This is sometimes a hazard of being creative. Liking to create things, creation draws attention, and often admiration. Maybe that’s why I so often switch creative genres.  Dabbling in different things, never going too far in one field. A lot of people would view some of my actions in life as fear of success. I disagree, it’s not fear motivating me for one, and for two, I don’t think I have the same definition of ’success’ as many people do. I don’t need to have ‘prestige’ in order to feel successful in life.  I don’t need awards, or certificates, television shows, money, etc, I don’t think being successful comes from ‘things’ at all, or even from ‘accomplishments’. I think being successful comes from being happy, from deep contentment, from acceptance, from having inner serenity and compassion. It’s a state of mind, not a state of status. Keeping separate from other peoples constructions of pedestals tends to keep me focused on what really matters to me.

I’m not successful because I have a number of degrees including an MA in psychology. I’m not unsuccessful because I’m on disability due to health issues. I’m not successful because I own my own home and am married. I’m not unsuccessful because I don’t have kids and a white picket fence. I’m not successful because I’ve been on television or have x amount of internet recognition. I’m not unsuccessful because I’m not in more prominant media.

I am successful, because I have succeeded in knowing who I am, accepting who I am, loving who I am, and being who I am, true to myself. That I’m motivated by internal personal goals, and not by some societal expectations of what it means to be successful. That I do what I want, when I want, based on self knowledge, self interest, and acceptance of my goals, desires and my limitations, the whole package. I’m successful because I care about me, being true to myself, and about others, and doing my best to be true to others, and supporting and accepting their truths and limitations as well.  We are all imperfectly perfect, and we are all being ourselves, very successfully.

I guess my frustrations are with assumptions, constructions, that others interpret around my actions and words and works, creative and otherwise. I don’t want to be successful on other peoples terms. I don’t write things, or do things, to be popular or unpopular. I think a lot of times, people have a very hard time listening to me when I speak my truths about my motivations in life. My motivations in my words and actions. It’s simple, I want to be true to myself and others. I want happiness, love and compassion and to do what is meaningful to me and my happiness. If it’s not working for me, if what I write is misunderstood and consistently taken to mean things it does not.  I stop writing in those venues.  So these days, I write very little in terms of public words.  Someone else will come along and say it just as well if not better than I eventually anyways. It doesn’t have to be me.  What’s important is the circulation of positive ideas… not that it’s me circulating them.

There seems to be a lot of people on fetlife circulating positive ideas. I’ve been very happy to just listen.