Generally, ratings communities don't bother me at all, so I'm surprised to realize I am mildly unnerved by a community like theskimyoucrew, where people submit their LiveJournal entries to be judged as formal pieces of writing by the admitted members. In theory, there's nothing wrong with the existence of the community: it's all by choice, they don't go trolling for journals to judge and the people submitting their journals for jugment are asking for it (and not in the "she has a short skirt on" sort of way).

I guess (and again, this is a PERSONAL response, not a global indictment) my anxiety stems from the fact that it took me a number of years to be comfortable doing 'snapshot' writing on here, to give up being right and clean and solid with my prose before releasing it to the world. And and now that I'm used to this sloppy yet generative way of writing, I'm protective of my little space on the internet where it's okay to go from pre-release book material to questions about soap to videos about Power Rangers. Which raises the question: just who (or what) do I think I'm protecting myself from?

Let's face it: LiveJournal is pleasurable for writing because it is a technologically engineered safe space. Where else you can ban detractors and "unfriend" readers with the click of a button? In trying to figure why I feel vaguely uncomfortable with a LiveJournal community, I'm reminded of how my friend Greg responded when I asked about the weather in Quatar: "How would I know? Everyone with a desk job hasn't been outside air conditioning in months, maybe years." So maybe discomfort isn't the right word, given the fact that I'll go eat dinner in half an hour and forget all about this, but I started this entry so I might as well push on...

Alright, so here is a realization: I just figured out that although I'm certainly guilty being the person who judges the writing style of other people's journals (that's arguably how all reading works, and why would my reading practice be any different) to this point I've been pretty successful at suspending judgment on my own journal writing. On this most public of venues, I've been relatively successful at turning off my own my superego off from time to time, which is no small feat.

This is not the same as saying, "I write for myself." It's about staying committed to the idea that I wouldn't know my whole self it bit me in the ass.

Maybe I'll write more about this later. Maybe not. Hit send.

*Thanks to Roland Barthes for the quote