Saturday, September 29, 2007

Censorship and The Editor.

'Whatever you do,' said my wife the other day,'Don't write about our guest. She'll be embarrassed to read about herself, sleeping on our living room floor.'

And, out of respect, I decided to write nothing until her penultimate night with us. However, I see nothing to be embarrassed about: Bilge is a thoroughly pleasant and good-tempered person, and while we've had to work around each other a bit over the past three weeks, I would much rather have her staying safely with us than in some dodgy bedroom-cum-storeroom with no proper lock in the dangerous end of town.

I was thinking of calling this post 'What Will The Neighbours Think?', because it isn't really about so much external censorship as the internal feeling that someone's watching you and judging you. This, I must admit, isn't helped by the knowledge that certain people are avid readers of my output of drivel. Well, hopefully avid. Well, hopefully readers. Except for when I'm feeling particularly down, I tend to restrict what I say here, and indeed in everyday life. But why?

Because, I think, I am by nature a pessimistic person - not that I look for the negative things in life: I just see them lying around as it were. In one way, this is advantageous, as I'm extremely good at planning and strategy. On the other hand, I'm always looking at what will go wrong rather than enjoying that which is alright right now. In other words, I find it hard to live in the moment. And because of these frets and worries, I occasionally freeze up entirely. Displacement activities (such as writing this when I have other things to do) appear, and then I feel that I have an insurmountable obstacle in front of me.

But I was talking about censorship, or rather my own internal editor. Because of this tendency to over-forward think, I get anxious as to how others may percieve me: as such, what I write may, I think, cause offence, and so stuff that on its own is entirely innocuous doesn't get put down on the page. Or, somewhere inside me, a voice starts saying 'that's rubbish, everyone will laugh at you for an idiot if you write or say that.' And it's a very hard voice to ignore, even if I know it to be true. What I seem to be looking for is approval from everyone, something that is clearly absurd. I then end up doing nothing and saying nothing, which is equally absurd, especially for someone who should, at his age, know better.

S0 - any suggestions for turning of the editor within?

1 comment:

sattvicwarrior said...

forget what OTHERS think. do it for YOURSELF.
THere are people that will praise you and there are those that will condemn . and SO WHAT ???
who cares.
its all about the moment anyway.
the first thing i think i would do is take off the COMMENT MODERATION thing. thats control issues. . silly.
of you want peoples opinion do it with abandon after all it IS your blog.. if your going to moderate comments, then why bother to ask people to express thier truths?