One Hundred Ninety-Two Days

I have not written anything, read, or even thought about this blog in one hundred ninety-two days, or just over six months. In the beginning, I was so excited to start a blog and was so willing to work through the challenge of writing fresh, humorous, insightful, daily posts. After reading a new acquaintance's blog, I thought long and hard about why I'd let my own blog disappear and I came up with two main reasons:

Who really gives a shit about what I have to say, anyway? With the advent of social media like Facebook and Twitter, I have slowly watched my RL friends, colleagues, and family turn into self-absorbed gossip hounds. People obsessively wait for that next update or for their ex-boyfriends from high school to post pics of their new families, or they post meaningless information about how much they've had to drink or how they've just gotten a new manicure. I don't find any of this to be valuable information, and it seems like our culture is becoming entirely "me" centered -- a shift that I don't think is a step in the right direction. I cancelled my RL Facebook account and I stopped posting to this blog since I am not an authority on anything and I don't want to waste other people's time with self-important posts.

The anonymity of SL brings out the worst in people. My SL New Year's Resolution was to become nicer and more friendly to the people who I meet in SL. Since January, I have interacted with lots of different people who behave deplorably. They lie, use people for sex, or are trolls - insulting and bullying people. I fully realize that SL is NOT RL and can be a wonderful playground for people to explore fantasies, personas, and situations that are not possible in RL. But, this does not mean that it's acceptable to check humane treatment of others at the log-in screen, then retrieve it when we re-enter the real world - aka the place where we're accountable for our actions. I have no doubt that the people who behave deplorably in SL are actually decent people in RL which is why their behavior in SL is all the more baffling to me. If I were to continue to write about my adventures in SL, this blog would turn into a permanent rant or bitch session and I am not going to let myself fall down that rabbit hole of negativity or become a hypocrite because of my New Year's Resolution.

Having posted this, the question is: Will I post again? For now, I am just not sure. Perhaps.