Social Media's availability has certainly created its share of trolls. That's not what I really wanted to say, because snarky people of limited intellect have been around since the early days of language. What's different has been the expansion of the audience into cyberspace. People's expressions of what they think has not changed. My own skill at articulating what I really mean has these ongoing faulty meanings which never get fully resolved.
Like everyone else, I have experiences, thoughts, positions, and reactions that need to be transformed from cerebral storage into written expression. Sometimes I care if I have somebody else to receive those articulated ideas, sometimes not, or at least not right now.
As my semi-annual initiatives have moved along roughly halfway through this allotted calendar segment, my self-expression goals have lagged behind some of the others. As I think of a topic I wish to develop, I jot it on a dedicated sheet of paper for storage in a dedicated folder. I've accumulated fifteen subjects, written and sent to editors only two. Partially written quite a few more. It is that barrier from partially expressed to suitable for a reader which has stymied me this past quarter.
I currently struggle over two themes. My Jewish experience over a lifetime has failed to reach it's potential. In the world of machers, if I don't have a favorable experience with their organization there must be something inferior about me. It's probably not true, and may underlie why the exit ramps of Jewish affiliation seem as congested as they are. In no uncertain terms, whether my sense of being rebuffed is accurate, it is my conclusion. And organizational attrition speaks for itself. Putting this form of 2+2 into a few paragraphs has met many revisions, even though the concrete personal examples are plentiful and easy to describe. I have been using real examples of exclusion, hoping to assemble them into a unifying principle with neglected but possible remedies, but the cohesiveness of expression has not been forthcoming.
Like many others, I find the political transformation from thought to enhance public outcome to sloganeering intended to create loyal tribes distressing. But do I engage in that myself, though in a more dignified way? And what intersectionalities do I have? Where did they come from? This essay, using the White Board in My Space, filled out with values on one side, implementation on the other, has gone better than the other, though not entirely coherent.
My language skills being more than adequate, the gap between idea and expression may be in an uncertainty of what I want to convey. I'll struggle with some drafts and editing, but I really seem to have the motivation to merge the conceptual to the articulate. A struggle to be sure, but one that is gratifying once completed and submitted, no matter how much self-editing these projects entail.
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