Better left unsaid in Reiwa 6

I’ve mentioned this in past entries, but I’ve always been suspicious of diarists. I am also very suspicious about people who post on social media. Recently, to gauge the reactions of the people who still use Facebook, I’ve been using it myself more than normal. Every so often, I get a little reminder of something I posted ages ago, and every time, without fail, I cringe horribly. I regret just about everything I ever said on the platform. With the exception of birthday wishes, safety updates, schedule notifications, and things of that sort, everything I ever wrote there was a mistake.

So why write here?

I think that what I’m doing here, when I write here, is to collect and clarify ideas. It’s a kind of glorified talking to myself. In reality, it’s not functionally much different than when I talk to another person. In fact, it’s probably less valuable than that. Still, there’s always going to be that me-at-the-front-of-the-class voice in my head that tells me that a diary is a glorious thing and that writing has some inherent worth that speaking doesn’t. I’m increasingly convinced that that voice is wrong.

Why did I stop writing?

Because there were a lot more enjoyable things I could have been doing at any point in time. I was fixated on the notion of being a “writer” with all of its romanticism. But, fundamentally, with the exception of a fling of bad fan fiction in the early 2000s, I was never really able to dedicate myself to the stuff. That was a moral failing on my part, but I think it may have been a happy accident, so to speak. While it’s true that my reasons for stopping were laziness induced, fundamentally, I don’t think that I’ve ever really had much of anything that was worth saying or reading. And documenting that wasn’t particularly helpful for anybody. It’s possible that, had I lived a richer and more significant inner life, I could have had more to say. But I didn’t. And so, in the end, not burdening the world with more unreadable text was probably a kindness. Born out of a series of moral and personal failings, to be sure, but probably for the best.

So why writing here, or ever?

Most of my writing these days, outside of work, is when I have a tremendous amount of time to kill during university days. Which lowers the bar a lot in terms of valid and valuable uses of my time. But even when I’m not posting here, which is most Mondays, I generally make it a point of trying to write poetry. I’ve been sufficiently enlightened to realize that I do not write, nor have I likely ever written, good poetry, but I still keep up with it, and I am considering doing another course of poems over the Christmas fast.
Why?
The closest thing I can compare it to is Iaido.
Iaido is the most useless of the martial arts. It is the art of drawing one’s sword. It has no practical application, and it’s not even very good exercise. However, it’s viewed as a form of mental training. By taking one’s focus and pushing it onto some action, there is some kind of reward and some kind of merit to the individual. Neither Iaido nor writing have a great deal to recommend them to me, but when the ability to entertain myself drops below a certain point, or when I feel that I’m not doing enough for myself, then writing suddenly starts to make a bit of sense.

Of course, there are also edge cases.

I really feel as though my verbal skills are collapsing the longer I live in Japan. Verbal skills were always my strong suit, so seeing what I’m best at collapse so spectacularly is kind of difficult. Although I am no longer witty, I’d like to be sure that this is out of having outgrown or moved on from mere wit rather than an incapacity to handle it. My last in depth conversation with a native English speaker about broad issues was so embarrassing for me. Everything that I said was so banal, so basic, so obvious. I feel like I completely wasted the time of an elderly man. Not only did I not have an original idea, I couldn’t combine, explain, or comment on these commonalities in an interesting way. It was just two tired old men talking politics in a McDonald’s.
Of course, it’d be better to talk to people, meaningful and wonderful people, endlessly and to build myself back up in that way. Sadly, I just don’t have that option. Certainly not in English. Still, as much as this is contrary to evidence, I’m finally learning the value of shutting up, something I never understood in the past.

So, what’s the merit of writing here? Organizing thoughts. Practicing the stringing of ideas together. Expressing ideas in a way that’s more logical and coherent than I’m in the habit of doing. For the first time in ages, I’ve got a little bit of fun and interesting (girl related) drama in my life, but sharing it here seems gauche and either heartless or tactless. Boundaries. that’s another good use of this. Learning what to write about and what not to write about.

What not to write about.