I’ve had a very unusual audience reading me as of late, and i think it’s been having an effect on what i am and am not writing about. Aside from the multiple real-life entanglements i seem to have mired myself in with some of these new fans, i have also picked up a few erstwhile instant messaging pals from a ways back. It’s them that have been really making me think lately, about what i write and about myself. One of them has a lot more in common with me than i ever knew back when we were just casual writing associates, trading fiction back and forth. Talking to him recently has been a strange experience, much like when i first got to know Tony … feeling as though i am looking into a mirror and feeling only a slight dissonance between my own self image and the one being reflected back at me.
Two days ago i was chatting with all of the usual AM suspects when a new message window popped onto my screen from my old friend. It read: “I stopped reading your blog. It was getting depressing.” Upon questioning he couldn’t quite put his finger on what about CK was bothering him… whether it in itself was depressing, or whether the tiny contrasts between his own interior monologue and this exterior one of mine were what was wrong. He said he might start reading again after a few days of break, but tonight he had no idea that i had made plans for tomorrow night; he hadn’t started reading again.
Writing since our first conversation has been hard, moreso than avoiding publicizing my V-day plans for all to hear or trying to work Sara into a blog before she beats me to death with a stapler next time i show up in the office. Despite all of the filters i put on what i am and am not allowed to talk about, i hardly ever think about how and why anyone else reads it, and as such it is equally shocking to me to find out i am being depressing or funny or something else that no one can quite pinpoint.
It’s the same thing as my dissonance with a mirror, really, as seen from both sides — i am at once shocked that anyone cares enough to notice and skeptical that anyone notices enough to care. And, honestly, it’s nice to be a surprise to myself from both directions.