I’ve been rather quiet for the last few days in part due to a recent health scare. Or mild illness, or under-the-weather-ness, depending on how you look at it. I’ve struggled to find the best way to express what I’ve gone through over the last few days because I don’t want it to sound too severe. At the same time, I had to miss a couple of days of work because of it, so I can’t just blow it off when someone asks what happened. Of course I could also choose not to talk about it whatsoever, which I had been considering for a while, until I thought it would fit in with a decent blog post.
I’ll stop you right here to say that I’m not going to openly disclose what it was on my blog or on any of my social networking sites. But I will say that it absolutely was NOT serious, it was not contagious and that I’m 100% good to go.
There were several points during the week where I had considered making a Facebook update about my condition, but at each point I had thought about two things. One: that people really didn’t need to know every single detail of my medical journey. (I seem to finally found the one subject that I don’t want to share on the Internet.) And two: Any post that I would write or tweet would only garner sympathy and make me look like an asshole simply looking for sympathy, which I did not want for once.
I started to think about all of the times I chose to share things online whether it was a great sandwich. Or a nasty break up. Or general feelings of loneliness. Or a really shitty day at work. Or “OMG Zero Dark Thirty!” How much of that do people really need to know? How much of that do I really want people to be aware of? And how much of that is me just looking for attention?
I also started to think about the general online culture. I enjoy reading blogs like Gawker and Thought Catalog, but most of their articles seem to be centered around a certain self-centeredness. As if their world view or current status update is the most important thing in the world. For example, Gawker ran a whole days worth of articles built around Beyoncé’s inaugural speech lip-synch. As if there was nothing else newsworthy and that it was a complete shocking disaster. I realize that the job of most of these blogs is to get as many eyeballs on the product as possible, while also maintaining a certain satirical snark about what they write. The problem is that this self-centeredness taps into a lot of people’s own ideas of self-worth and importance. Many people are perhaps like me, they must be the STAR of their own social network.
I have been accused, at times, of being a drama queen. Of creating situations out of nothing and trying to draw attention to myself. I can’t say that I completely disagree with this analysis. But I have to wonder, as I dealt with my own little health situation this week, if that is completely true with all things in my life or that I simply choose to share information (sometimes a lot of information) to entertain, provoke, or simply tried to connect with other people with. I’m only choosing to share in my recent health situation NOW because I wanted to make a point. If it was something serious, I would have kept that information to myself. I don’t necessarily need to broadcast my ailments.
I realize that I don’t live in a vacuum on the internet and that a lot of what I post or write about could effect people in various ways. I could check into somewhere on Foursquare while somebody is wondering why I haven’t returned a text. Or I could write something like “I had great sex last weekend” which could be misinterpreted by a dozen different people. Not everything I write has meaning, but it certainly could have consequences.
I’m a month away from turning 28. I think I’m about done with broadcasting my feelings about everything and I’m ready to start choosing my sentences more wisely.
… But that said, I did have some AMAZING sex last weekend.
