All your brain are belong to us

[tinyjo]

It's been an interesting experience, keeping a journal for the first time really. I've been updating this almost every weekday since I got it back in August, getting more and more into it and interested by it. I've searched out other journals and articles and though I've discarded many, I've also kept a few. More disturbingly perhaps, I realised last night that it's also affecting the way I think. Not what my thoughts are (although it has affected this too, but that's not what I mean) but the way that I form them. I'm starting to think in the style of a journal entry. I realised this on my bike on the way home from the pub last night when I was thinking about being drunk and how that makes you react to things. I suddenly realised that I was writing a journal entry in my head and have been doing a lot lately. Most of them, I don't get round to posting but some do make it onto the screen - this one for instance. As soon as I realised that was what I was doing, I started thinking about what I was doing and what I would say about it. In some ways, this is good. As I do when typing, I go back and rewrite and revise where I think, on re-reading, that I've been mistaken or unfair or where I realise that what I've said/thought doesn't make sense. But I find it disquieting. By giving my thoughts a shape like this, am I limiting them? Am I becoming overly self-absorbed, or alternatively too absorbed with how I present my thoughts? It's also true however that I'm not really sure what my thoughts were like before now. By the time I've realised what's happening, the phenomena has already overtaken me. So it's possible that it's just that I am simply recognising a style that I use already now that I'm using it somewhere else and more deliberately. That it's my journal which is copying my brain and not the other way round. In the end, as so many things are, it's probably a two way process - I'll just have to keep an eye on it and try to make sure that my journal doesn't end up running my thoughts...

At least I still have more moods than are available in the mood list :)

Comments

[zoo-music-girl.livejournal.com]

I've been doing that too, but I think I always did to a certain extent.

On the subject of other good journals, my friend Alasdair is always a good read: http://www.black-ink.org and I've recently discovered http://www.whereveryouare.org/weblog/

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

Which reminds me - is Alasdair the one who writes noir comics (or comics at least)? And if yes, can I borrow something by him?

[zoo-music-girl.livejournal.com]

I don't have any of his printed comics, I'm not sure if he's done any printed comics, but there are web comics linked from his site.

I think you're thinking of Antony (www.mostlyblack.com - no blog) whose 'Frightening Curves' I meant to lend to you and forgot. Will try to remember next time I'm home.

Alasdair was nominated for an award for online comic 'Rust'.

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

You're right - I am indeed thinking of mostlyblack - I remember really liking the online one of his that I read but then I lost the link. I'll check out the black-ink ones. Thanks :)