The People Behind My Eyes

Blog World Pet Peeves-Friday, July 28, 2006-5:37 AM

I got the idea to do my own list of Blog World Pet Peeves from the blogger at A Safe Place. I liked that list so I thought I’d go ahead and do one of my own.

My biggest blog pet peeves are all about comments (w/ a bit of humor mixed in)

1. Anonymous comments. If you can say it you can own it. I wouldn’t care if you signed the name, “Pete” and you were really “Sally” or “Jack”. Heck, sign a handle, a screen name, a nickname…something. When someone leaves an anonymous comment they leave their true intensions to doubt. Is this person sincere? Who is this person and why would they not want me to know a name? Why do they want to be anonymous instead of just signing some kind of name? There are a ton of questions asked and the true sense of the comment may be missed. Just leave a name, any name for the love of Pete. Humor me here!!

1. (my number thing is off and I can’t fix it w/out jacking stuff up) A blog that talks about very sensitive topics but doesn’t have a place to leave a comment or a guestbook to sign in order to leave a comment.
2. Blogs that require a hell of a lot of information in order to leave a simple comment. So every single time you want to leave a comment you have to enter in all this info just to say, “This is funny.” or something equally as short and to the point. My blog doesn’t require all that info to be filled in each time so please don’t feel obligated to fill in every single time. And don’t get me started on those comment codes that would challenge the patients of Job or say…Gandhi. I think it might even drive Gandhi to violence..some of those codes!!!! Blogger.com is so good at making them as hard as possible. And if you take too long filling it out it’ll tell you that you didn’t do it right when you did and give you another code even harder than before. Like I said, don’t even get me started!!!

3. Comments that completely leave out the human factor. I hate comments that are unusually negative and accusatory when the commenter does not even know the blogger. I’ve been guilty of a few inflammatory comments myself. I’ve gone back to apologize up and down. I forgot the human factor. I forgot that behind the screen is a human being that may or may not be up to my personal lack of control. Think before you click because what you say matters. You can hurt a perfect stranger so think before you click. I originally thought I found the graphic at beautifuldreamer’s place but it was actually Cat With A Pen’s place. (good journals by the way)

I’m going to switch gears on this one. These are the top things I hate about my thought process while blogging.

1. I worry so much about saying the wrong thing and making another survivor feel bad. I worry about every single solitary word I write being said the wrong way or taken the wrong way.
2. I worry that if I put up a blogroll that names that are not intentionally left off will feel hurt. I fear that if I put one up there will be someone out there wondering why on earth their link isn’t there…she’s known me for this long how come my name isn’t up there? I worry…man do I worry.
3. I worry about my inconsistencies being seen as lies. I worry that someone is so ready to tear apart the entries to find the slightest inconsistency and then call it a lie.
4. I worry that I’ll show too much strength then when I fall people will be like, oh damn Aussie’s down I didn’t see that one coming…
5. I worry about family members finding my blog.
6. I worry about sounding stupid.
7. I worry about my spelling. I can’t spell. I’ve gotten better but the truth is, I can’t spell worth crap. I use Word to correct things but I still worry, worry, worry. So I end up reading the entry several times before posting it because someone just might think Aussie is stupid. Arggh! Make it stop!! Just make the inner dialogue stop!!
8. I worry about crossing other people’s boundaries when I comment. I worry about giving too personal of a reply to blogs that I’ve visited for the first time. I worry that I’m going to be on some blog blacklist getting circulated to all overly critical half wits.Then I’ve got another reason to believe that I’m a “bad girl.” Yeah, I worry…a lot. Pressing send or save is a hard thing for me to do because for me is means that I may just be reassured that yes, I’m a bad person.
9. I worry that people will come to depend on me. I worry that they will need more than I can give. I worry that saying that will make people not reach out when I am up to helping….again, I worry… I don’t want to be anyone’s rock but I don’t want to be unavailable and unapproachable either.
10. What name do I sign? And if I sign a name other than the generic name “Austin” will it even be believable?
11. I worry about talking about physical stuff because I fear that people will think I’m a hypochondriac…. As if the only problems a mental health patient has are mental…like maybe I can only have mental health problems but physical problems added make me a hypochondriac. I worry.

Clearly the major theme of these pet peeves is, “I fear what people will think.” I care what people think. I long for acceptance but mock it at the same time. I’m a human being, I both need and hate people. I’m a survivor; I fear so much that I’ve somehow taken all this out of context and that in fact the mother was a good mother.As you can see, blogging is so very a complicated thing for me/us. Self doubt is the ugliest beast in the world. Somebody’s going to find out I’m a fake. Somebody is going to find out that the abuse wasn’t that bad. Somebody is going to find out that I’m not as strong as I appear and they’re going to be disappointed. I click send and this is what I think, every single solitary time, this is what I think. I beat myself up a lot. Like I said, somebody make it stop.

Austin