Nothing is true until it's posted in LJ...

[jducoeur]

Note to self: stop being so damned negative.

I was reminded again yesterday of something I've been noticing all year: somewhere along the line, I picked up a habit of complaining about minor stuff, out of habit more than anything else. I think it's a leftover from the depression of the past couple of years, but it's neither especially useful nor healthy. As a matter of mental hygiene, that's a habit well worth losing...

Comments

[jducoeur]

Hmm. Requires some mental discipline, but it's an interesting idea. Thanks!

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

I've found LJ, or at least our corner of it, encourages this behavior through how we comment on each other's posts. Moody, negative posts get more attention comment-wise than comparable positive posts. (Actual content posts get more attention than either, but those require effort to write.) If you let yourself be swayed by this it can lead down that slope, and even if you don't others do get swayed and you take it as a social norm. Just something to be aware of as a potential effector on mood and behavior.

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

Plus, it's easier to be verbose when feeling a strong emotion -- however, if it's a happy strong emotion, one is usually off doing whatever started the feeling. If it's a negative one, often the opposite, and a computer may be near, and voila, a depressive post.

I have a friend who is always down in the dumps on LJ about his work, his hobby, and his progeny. It's very depressing; maybe one in 10 posts (or less) are "life is OK" posts. I sure hope it doesn't reflect reality.

You're not in that camp yet, Jducoeur, but it's a good thing to guard against.

[siderea]

True, but was jducoeur speaking of LJ? Perhaps here is some filter to which I am not party on which the negativity is being posted, but as much of his journal I am seeing is pretty relentlessly upbeat, with rave reviews of good things to digest and good places to get 'em, and thoughts on solutions to problems.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

I didn't mean to imply that he was only being negative on LJ -- I don't have a large enough sample set. However, behavior learned in one medium does seem to carry over into other media. I have a number of overlapping social circles who are centered on electronic fora, and in each circle the conventions that were converged to online tend to arise in FTF, and tend to color the people's behavior in other interactions (this is only really observable in people whom I know from multiple online circles). But boy is that an essay for another day, when I have more evidence...

Also, it was more of an observational effect -- that you see that other people post their negativity, and that in turn influences your behavior -- rather than evidence from his past journal I was going on. Not "you've been negative in your journal", but "folks are negative in their journals around here; you've noticed this in yourself -- perhaps it's one influence?"

[jducoeur]

Correct -- it's mainly in personal conversation that I've noticed a tendency to waste time on the negative. (And even more, I still have a tendency to mope and/or worry internally, left over from the depression...)

[jducoeur]

Hmm. I don't think that effect is getting to me too much, solely because I don't post all that many emotion-centric posts. That is, the considerable majority of my posts are intellectual in nature; even the navel-gazing ones tend to be overintellectualized.

So there might be a bit of effect, but I don't think it's a major vector. Mostly, this seems to be showing up in conversation, and especially within my own head -- I'm tending to borrow trouble for no particularly good reasons...

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

Irony alert. :-)

("I hate when I am negative. I just hate it!")

Some folks I read have taken to posting a "5 good things" list each week, or something like that.

I tend to post negative things about politics, and positive things about life. Except when I don't.

[jducoeur]

Don't know if the "5 good things" is quite my style, but it's worth thinking about. Thanks for the suggestion!

[new-man.livejournal.com]

I was just talking to Lakshmi about this, although it's an observation I made a while ago.

At the end of the day, I can get into bed and think "Crap. I did nothing today, and that I did poorly. I have so much to do. I wasted another day. My life isn't what I want it to be". Or, I can think "Today was a good day. I'm happy, and I'm looking forward to tomorrow" -- and I can think either of those things about the same day and they're both equally true. You really do get to control whether the glass is half full or half empty, and there's a lot of power in saying things aloud.

I spent a little while saying the latter to Morwenna at the end of the day. It made me happy to say it, and her happy to hear it. I've stopped lately; time to kick myself in the ass again. It's a good life -- but only if I make it so.

[jducoeur]

Yaas. Intellectually I've got that (indeed, there are reasonably frequent days when I succeed in it), but I'm still working on putting it fully into practice more consistently...

[baron-steffan.livejournal.com]

Differential diagnosis:
(a) Patient is getting older.
(b) Condition may be communicable variety. You may have caught it from others you know, such as myself -- see above %^S.

"Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There's a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in"
--- Leonard Cohen, "Anthem"

[jducoeur]

(a) Patient is getting older.

Undoubtedly part of it, yes. It's only in the past few years that I've been even remotely aware of my age at a gut level -- previous to that, I've always been very young internally. A succession of events slammed me with awareness of age and mortality, and that's gotten rather under my skin. Now I need to figure out how to push that to the background...