Not Your Bloggish Blog, Revisited

I have made PMD even less bloggish, shutting down the "Comments" feature, removing the sketchy blogroll, and eliminating Sitemeter. I have no idea who if anyone is reading this, and no one who doesn't know who I am can reach me.

This is in part sheer self-protectiveness. One of the results of my depression over the past two years has been an increasing incapacity to deal with non-positive interactions. Whether in "real life" or in cyberspace, I want to avoid that sort of contact as much as possible. I cannot handle the jostling and frequent rudeness on web bulletin boards, and I have eliminated as many of them from my awareness as possible. I post on only a handful of boards anymore, and hope to get the number down to zero soon. I try not to comment on others' blogs; I am also trying not to cultivate "virtual friendships," and have sometimes elected to go silent rather than try to explain why those quasi-relationships are not healthy for me. All these are survival tactics; the world of someone who has been at the edge of suicide himself, and was horrifyingly involved with an even more suicidal individual (there are gradations!), is truly not like the world of those not so affected.

I don't want to make this sound more sad or pitiful than it is. I choose to limit myself in this way so as to be happier; a degree of happiness is still somewhat available to me, but only if I take intelligent precautions.

Since PMD is more than ever for my use primarily, it may become less penetrable for other readers. I may largely discontinue the sort of explanatory language I fitfully use to give some slight context to my observations; but that remains to be seen. I may experiment with a more stream-of-consciousness style. I could, of course, revert to a non-web-based diary that would not raise any of these issues of communicative clarity, since no one else would be able to read the entries. But for some possibly perverse reason, I like the thought of remaining at the edge of invisibility without becoming functionally invisible. Hence a blog that is shadowy, unpromoted, unconnected, vaguely solipsistic; but that can still be found and read, and may occasionally appeal to a kindred reader.

UPDATE (5/1/2009): I took up these themes again when I revived the blog in May 2009. Essentially, this all still applies. I thought a lot about these issues in the intervening months, but didn't really change my views on them. The Vanity Fair article "You've Got (Hate) Mail," discussed in another post, did nothing to dissuade these attitudes, trust me.

I'm aware in re-reading some of these posts that it can all be a little much of a downer, and to any readers I do have, I apologize for that. I'm just trying to be utterly clear (with myself as much as anyone) about the whys and wherefores of these decisions, as small as they are.