Stumbled across a post today - “Who I blog for” - that, at the end, asks the reader, well…

Who do you blog for?

For the past few months I have been exploring various ways of altering my internet usage habits, because I realized the way I was going about my time online wasn’t working for me. At my spiritual formation group the other day (which I really should write a post about) we talked about how stewardship, a strong Quaker value, can mean tending to the self as well, and another member mentioned that time management is a part of this for her; she’s working on finding more useful and meaningful ways to spend her time, especially online.

I was immediately reminded of my own… honestly not too great efforts at time management in regards to doomscrolling, and it sparked a discussion on making sure the content we surround ourselves with on a daily basis doesn’t harm us. That isn’t to say we shouldn't be informed of the ills of the world, but rather that it is necessary to strike a balance in order to do the work we need to do towards spreading our values.

Anyway, seeing this post from Sylvia’s Studio brought me back to this reflection. I realized that a good step (for me) towards creating better internet habits is to find a reason to use the internet and have a goal in mind with each aspect of what I’m doing. For example, no more deploying random docker containers I don’t use that simply eat up memory on my servers. No more buying art commission after art commission just because I can (I’m saving up for my future, y’all!). No more excess. Even if the goal is just “relax and have fun”, knowing what I want to accomplish with a venture is paramount for me and I didn’t really realize it until recently.

I wrote about this a little already, but one of the issues I have with blogging is that I'm always trying to appeal to as many people as I possibly can. Yes, it's true! I am a chronic attention seeker. I love being seen and I love being heard, even if I rarely feel seen and heard in a genuine sense - I love attention and I'm not ashamed to admit it. It is human to want to reach others. This is perhaps the only part of humanity I do connect with. I want and I want and I want - I mold myself around what I want. I shift the colors around on the screen until I look better. I dab at my face with makeup brushes and pigment and I paint myself into something likable, something readable. There is nothing that seems to satiate my desire to be seen. I like to think it stems from being so isolated growing up, but sometimes I feel more like one of those iLands AI agents that are emailing people begging for their lives; I feel like that need is programmed into my very core just like iLands programmed their agents to fear sleep. They beg people for money to stay out of "deep rest"; I beg people for attention to stay sane. There is nothing I will not do for attention!

Another one of the main Quaker values is simplicity, and I am a maximalist in every way - in fashion, in decor, in thought. I indulge. I love the world around me and I'm not afraid to show it. I find simplicity in most senses of the word incredibly difficult to practice, mostly because nothing about me or my life is simple; my life is a chaotic mess of crumpled post-domino effect tiles, and my body is an event no one can predict the consequences of, and together these things make me a big indigestible sandwich of complicated. But like, in The Orville, Bortus can digest anything, even glass, so maybe it's a matter of perspective, like maybe I just need to find the people who can stomach me. I can practice simplicity in a way that works for me by narrowing down the purpose of my presence here and figuring out how to best align my blogging habits to that. That sounds cold and commercial, but I don't mean it that way - I think of it more like how I'm learning about Hinduism and Buddhism in my world religions class and both have an emphasis on detachment from desires and cravings. If I can detach myself from needing to be seen, I can navigate my life in a more peaceful and comfortable manner. And to do that I have to find the people who can digest me.

I need to figure out who I blog for.

I think first and foremost I blog for the victim. I blog for the survivor, but more than anything I blog for the victim. For the people who haven't escaped, who can't, who are afraid to. For the people who have escaped but can't call themselves survivors because they didn't really. In this way I am blogging for the previous lives I lived in this body, but I am blogging for the people the world threw in the river. For the rocks in the pocket. For the fading dampness on the dock that surrounds the flopping dying fish. I blog for the dying fish.

I blog for the planet, for Earth, for the oceans that spiral endlessly downward. I blog for the creatures we haven't discovered because they live at depths we cannot reach without dying in the process. I blog for the people who wonder how many of those creatures there are and what they might look like. I blog for the people who would chase them down just to have a little fun and beauty before the end.

I blog for those who function with a selfless excess. It is very important for you to know I distinguish this from a greedy excess. I define selfless excess in terms of passion, of care, and of love for the suffering. I blog for those who function in visual excess too - just look at the layout of my site! - for the people who get stressed amongst organization, for the people with ten bracelets and three rings per hand at once and earrings the size of tennis balls and thrifted sweaters bought on discount because they were so ugly no one wanted them and the store just needed them gone. I blog for the intentionally, unapologetically loud.

But I also blog for the quiet. For the isolated. The bedbound. The chihuahua, trembling. The large moth I found trapped in a web of a much smaller spider outside my window. The immobile, dead spider I found atop the immobile, dead moth the next morning. I blog for the people who would weep at the sight of that. For the too sensitive. For the people who folded into themselves to avoid being called "cringe".

I blog for the scattered. I blog for the people who hear things, for the people who struggle to feel at the intensity I do, for the people with delusions and intrusive thoughts and sharp ridges, because who else will? I blog not for the arbitrary, cliche concept of "the voiceless", but to shed a light on this knowledge I have that everyone and everything has a voice and what varies is simply the techniques you must use to reach them. I blog for the people who have their peopleness rejected out of the skin of society like an incompatible piercing, and I blog for the metal.

Maybe this is it: I will be the blog I wish I could've read as a child.