kradeelav | (no subject)

a guy who i had not been following for all too long via RSS feeds announced he was pulling the plug on his blog and focusing on church life, since he was feeling bothered by the separation of internet/blog life <-vs-> church work.

and to be clear - good for him, i think he'll be ultimately happier (I got the hint that he had been on the chans a bit too long and that church was pulling him out of a very nihilistic shell).

but it got me to reflecting about my life since it is by ... (partial) design, extremely compartmentalized. in the exact way that he felt bothered by with his life, and it made me wonder - why do I not feel bothered? should I be? what's different about our experiences?

pretty much all of my major spheres of life/friends are extremely compartmentalized. a lot of them would outright hate each other. most of y'all would probably have a strong distaste for a certian channer-adjacent shitpost server i still quite adore. my immediate family would have an... extremely negative reaction to (the harder) art on this handle, but they're no less genuinely loving and grounding to me on a day to day basis and extremely worth nurturing in turn. said channer server would hate my art, but clearly i think it's worth drawing. the wheel goes on lol.

and to be sure, there's a non-zero psychological toll on actively keeping the compartmentalized areas separate but at the same time i significantly appreciate the freedom to navigate between these separate lives, far more than said toll. that freedom to wander in and out and in and out like a traveler on the road ... that's more precious to me almost more than everything. if a more fragile area collapses, i can wander off to a different one or recreate one. i can retreat if it's becoming too overstimulating. i don't have to slowly warp my psyche and ideals to fit an area.

in a way, i feel more full, being compartmentalized. fuller as a human.

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Wow, do I ever feel you on the compartmentalization. It's something I've had a lot of conversations with my partner about, why my fandom involvement is so separate, why I have so many different people around in different spaces that I share completely different things with, and god, yeah, on the different groups would hate each other

it's very freeing. I can have all of these disparate facets of myself that are for some people and not others, which means that I get to express all of those aspects rather than trying to find some unicorn who at least tolerates all of them.

see, you get it too. my ex was forever puzzled at the compartmentalization in similar talks but yeah; i wonder if they're just wired differently and need that identity group.

it takes a confident person in their own identity to be able to intentionally stay separate and know why, imo. i def get that from you.

honestly, I wonder if it's to do with how the internet used to be... webbed sites, forums, etc. were all very separate in populations, not a lot of "follow me on tumblr" or whatnot going on - each site had its own distinct vibe and populace?

thanks, though - I sure like to think that over the years I've gotten at least close to there. much easier than what I did when I was younger, trying to find some unicorn that I could just like...align totally with ^^'

This is really interesting to consider, because the lines between the different departments of my life have been blurry lately. It was a lot easier when I could compartmentalize, even as far back as high school when you reached out to different friend groups for different things. (The band nerds wouldn't go hiking, after all.)

But of course, I work in manga, so work/fandom has blurred which is a very strange place to be. (Yes, they know I write fanfiction, but no they do not get to see it.)

got a chuckle out of that band nerds mention XD those self imposed limits on the friend group are rather cute sometimes - like you also probably wouldn't see the anime club people go bar hopping with the wanna-be developer/golfers. :P

very smart to keep that work boundary there with the fic ~ i know it's so tempting sometimes, but it also keeps the level of options open with what you can write, what topics you can explore without too many eyeballs.

been kinda thinking about this sort of thing wrt a few things, recently. i've been chatting more with a group of friends who differ pretty hard from me on a few things, and it's just felt kinda odd.

i think i'm more on the side where having to completely compartmentalize interests/parts of myself is stressful rather than freeing, but i think that to some point, it's always going to be a part of life.

(and also, that's a big part of why i like my girlfriend! she's very open minded/even keeled, so i don't have to hide shit there. feels good to have that one place like that.)

having that one person to talk to about all facets is so helpful ... definitely lessens that psychological toll. not a 24/7 hiding but at least more manageable.

Probably a neural effort threshold thing, I'd imagine. I currently feel like I have to be compartmentalized to function, and it takes a lot out of me because it's not the way my brain is structured.

Other people find it easier because that's good for their brains. Mine tries to wodge everything together - things that are out of sight in any given moment become difficult-to-impossible to remember or track. I find myself deliberating for hours over whether to post something to a given platform, evaluating the risk of it being tracked back to another platform or identity.

I assume that people who can keep things in opaque storage containers and not just completely forget that the object exists and buy a new one can also deal with posting to more than one platform in more than one identity more effectively than I can!

I think the basic issue is that I have to do a lot of things consciously that others do automatically, so the actions involved in switching modes are more costly for me than for others.

you know, that's a good point I hadn't thought about, that for some folks it would take more active effort than others simply due to mental structures. (or at least they might not be re-energized in the same way afterwards). your mention about the opaque storage containers is really cool and visual in a way that genuinely makes sense - almost like types of organizing? thinking about this one for sure.

This made me think about how I actively dislike compartmentalizing myself because I don't like the feeling of living a double life, but I do anyway... I tend to have different casual circles on different sites and even in Discord servers, so it is kind of a natural thing to fall into.

nod nod ... wonder if the compartmentalization online comes about because people are mostly searching for specific topics (fandom, engineering, etc) as a primary motivator, versus 'oh we went to college/school/were roommmates together' like it is in real life.

I don't think it has to do with diversifying tribes as much as how comfortable you are with self-isolation?

compartmentalization naturally means that you're kind of you're only companion and your only witness, you're the only one who will see "all" of you. Existentially this is true for everyone to a degree, but individually people are more or less comfortable with that.

I find if you're the type who's very comfortable being alone, it's a lot easier to diversify your tribes and meet people where they are, because you don't really expect them to come home with you (so to speak). However if you aren't comfortable being isolated with yourself, then diversifying your friend groups has a lot of tension because you can feel pulled different ways without a centralized core to ground you.

Personally I live a very compartmentalized life but I wouldn't say I'm comfortable with it, I don't really want to be my only witness to my own life and I feel more comfortable having chosen companions I can share the majority of it with, but for lack of that I had to learn to be comfortable with isolation because I don't really 'fit' anywhere so I kind of have to fracture myself to be visible at different areas. When I was younger this genuinely gave me a crisis about whether or not I was being a liar, a fake, or manipulator, because I couldn't really establish a consistency of who I was to myself so it felt like I was just in different costumes for different people. As a grew, building a consistency was a relief because knowing that I can exist in a more whole way to someone and be diverse of a personality within a singular space was re-affirming of my own authenticity. I can totally understand that guy's discomfort feeling bothered by the disconnect of his many 'lives' and wanting a more visible interaction.

You know, I enjoyed thinking about your points for a few nights especially with the line of - 'being (ones own) witness'; that struck a chord with me too. really poetic way of saying it.

i wonder if people with unique childhood experiences have to deal with this a disproportionate amount since that starts the shared experiences and commonalities and all. diaspora folks, people who may have had an early life affected by medical maladies, army brats who moved from place to place (though not of their own choosing) - there's already a more limited common experience to share with, with people in the "new" places for lack of a better word.

appreciate your thoughts~

really love this perspective, i hadn't considered that maybe having bubbles of your life that are separate from the others could be good and you don't need to integrate everything with everything else. been feeling a lot of 'i'm queer and my family doesn't know and telling them would upset them' angst lately. maybe it's perfectly fine that they only know a specific version of me