basilmemories (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
basilmemories) wrote2005-08-03 02:21 am
basilmemories) wrote2005-08-03 02:21 am
One with the entropy
I'm having a bit of an odd moment here.
Normally when I get into a debate I’m all too ready to answer quickly to any remark, good or bad; but there's something odd about the one I’m currently involved in with two people.
I can't seem to find energy or the correct words to respond. It’s not as if they tire me for any reason, one I have been around before and I find her an engaging person, and the other I don’t get the same feeling of exasperation that sometimes I get with other people. However I still feel as though I wish to put off my responses for an indefinite period of time.
There are two things that I can pin down as what might be leading to this current state of things: the first is that I feel outmanned and outgunned. When I first started my conversation there was only one person I was talking to, and she answered my questions/remarks with grace and calm reason. I was attempting to think up a proper reply when someone who I am not aquainted with answers my first line of questions.
Now part of me has a knee-jerk reaction of ‘who are you and who said you could join this discussion?’ but I am quite aware that the journal that I was responding to was very well not my own, and so I felt I had no right trying to fling around alpha-female type mannerisms. And if the person had been rude I would have asked her politely to tone it down, but at most all I got was a mild feeling of condescension (which gives me a minor twitch, but there were people I think highly of viewing my posts, so I refrained from any reactionary comments). I feel as though I’m being flanked in a way, quite politely flanked, but flanked nonetheless. It doesn’t help much that the secondary commenter received praise for her words, and there wasn’t even a note of, ‘isn’t it a little rude to start in without asking?’ I have debated with multiple people at once, and even doing well sometimes, but pretty much all of them have prefaced their comments with a ‘do you mind if I say something?’ post… and I can think of only once where I have said, ‘no; I’d rather you didn’t’.
The second problem is that I have to choose my words more carefully then I have in years. Not only am I being possibly watched by quite a few people I am fond of, but one of them I have no desire whatsoever to insult. In a discussion I rarely mean to cause affront to a person in the first place, but I have a way of making things sound bad, and any of my friends know just how wretched my track record is when trying to communicate my ideas. To put it in another way, I have to find words where there usually aren’t any, and express them with an eloquence I do not believe I have (I also feel that it would not do the two people justice to respond with a poorly-written answer when they have taken the time and effort to produce something so well-worded).
So I have been putting off giving a response for the past few days. I will give an answering post eventually, (as otherwise it would be rude) but at the moment I can’t think of anything that is even close to what I wish to say.
*sigh* which on that note, I also need to answer back to the message from my father on my disownment.
Ah well, such is life.
Normally when I get into a debate I’m all too ready to answer quickly to any remark, good or bad; but there's something odd about the one I’m currently involved in with two people.
I can't seem to find energy or the correct words to respond. It’s not as if they tire me for any reason, one I have been around before and I find her an engaging person, and the other I don’t get the same feeling of exasperation that sometimes I get with other people. However I still feel as though I wish to put off my responses for an indefinite period of time.
There are two things that I can pin down as what might be leading to this current state of things: the first is that I feel outmanned and outgunned. When I first started my conversation there was only one person I was talking to, and she answered my questions/remarks with grace and calm reason. I was attempting to think up a proper reply when someone who I am not aquainted with answers my first line of questions.
Now part of me has a knee-jerk reaction of ‘who are you and who said you could join this discussion?’ but I am quite aware that the journal that I was responding to was very well not my own, and so I felt I had no right trying to fling around alpha-female type mannerisms. And if the person had been rude I would have asked her politely to tone it down, but at most all I got was a mild feeling of condescension (which gives me a minor twitch, but there were people I think highly of viewing my posts, so I refrained from any reactionary comments). I feel as though I’m being flanked in a way, quite politely flanked, but flanked nonetheless. It doesn’t help much that the secondary commenter received praise for her words, and there wasn’t even a note of, ‘isn’t it a little rude to start in without asking?’ I have debated with multiple people at once, and even doing well sometimes, but pretty much all of them have prefaced their comments with a ‘do you mind if I say something?’ post… and I can think of only once where I have said, ‘no; I’d rather you didn’t’.
The second problem is that I have to choose my words more carefully then I have in years. Not only am I being possibly watched by quite a few people I am fond of, but one of them I have no desire whatsoever to insult. In a discussion I rarely mean to cause affront to a person in the first place, but I have a way of making things sound bad, and any of my friends know just how wretched my track record is when trying to communicate my ideas. To put it in another way, I have to find words where there usually aren’t any, and express them with an eloquence I do not believe I have (I also feel that it would not do the two people justice to respond with a poorly-written answer when they have taken the time and effort to produce something so well-worded).
So I have been putting off giving a response for the past few days. I will give an answering post eventually, (as otherwise it would be rude) but at the moment I can’t think of anything that is even close to what I wish to say.
*sigh* which on that note, I also need to answer back to the message from my father on my disownment.
Ah well, such is life.