Blogging, Facebook, and the inner critic

I am excited to finish my memoir draft and start rewriting it as a whole, and to hire a coach to help me build a following. I need a coach because I can’t get any momentum at blogging on my own, let alone at using social media effectively to promote my blog and my writing.

Why was I unafraid to blog in 2001-2005 (I had two blogs, with their own domains, for most of those years), but feeling so paralyzed now?

• My writing was topical and local then, and less personal, less about my life and my processing of my history.
• I had an audience of other bloggers. (I never should have stopped.)
• People were not online then looking for targets for their hostility, not looking for reasons and means to take somebody down. Comments I received were in good faith.
• I didn’t have Facebook connections and the baggage of their expectations as I imagine them. (Imagine is the key word. I don’t really know how my Facebook connections perceive me.)

Honestly that last one resonates the most. I need to think in depth about what I do and don’t do on Facebook, and why, and how posts and people there make me feel. And I need to examine my beliefs about my “image,” given that I can’t really know how other people see me.

Certain composite people, or personas, represent my Facebook audience in my mind. They morph into a gang of inner critics, and their (my) assumptions prevent me from blogging. These personas, created in my own mind from real experiences, are:

1. People who misinterpret.
2. People who think I am “too nice,” therefore naive, not smart, dull, lacking understanding of the real world.
3. People who like my niceness and my lighthearted posts and aren’t interested in any of my opinions or self revelations.
4. People who make me feel talked over or disrespected when I express an opinion, which makes me think that person/people want me to shut up about my opinions.
5. People who jump in and comment in order to correct or adjust an observation I’ve made, or to add a pedantic “yup” type of thing, like “you’ve said something that’s been obvious to me for a long time.” 
6. People I find intimidating because I feel they’re more successful, whatever that means.

Number 1 would be people with whom I don’t interact in real life. It’s hard to get someone’s jokes or understand their intentions correctly when it’s all Facebook.

Number 2 is the down side of being a mild person (woman) who projects a positive attitude and wants other people to feel good. Certain comments I’ve received after posting an opinion have caused me to believe some people see me in this unsophisticated way.

Number 3 only bothers me because I want all of my connections to value all of my thoughts, which isn’t realistic.

Number 4 and 5 are not always men.

Number 5 bothers me because that type of commenting takes a potentially fun conversation and uses it as an opportunity to score “smart points.” Pedants score points, without my having participated in a competition, and take the enjoyment out of the thread. They think what they are doing is normal, but their rudeness stands out.

Number 6, self-generated intimidation, comes from experiences in the grade-school social hierarchy, when I was judged for my opinions and mocked for the way I spoke and dressed. I learned not to seek attention to the point of not even participating. I “got over it” in that I participate as an adult in plenty of fun things, but I have never stopped evaluating the risk of doing so.

Interesting that I don’t include in that list of personas “people who find me insightful and would encourage me to post more of my thoughts” or “people I admire who might actually give me affirmative feedback” or “people who love me.”

I imagine that the people who love me think it’s strange that I even want to post personal stories and idiosyncratic views (and write a memoir) at all. I imagine them shaking their heads, with knitted brows. But I admire, and seek out, people who share personal stories and unique ways of seeing the world.

Of course, all of the phenomena 1 through 6 are projections — judgments my mind generates against myself, then assigns to other people. I don’t know what any of the real individuals I’m connected to on Facebook think of my posts unless they tell me. My projections turn my acquaintances, friends and connections into my inner critic’s voice. “What other people think of me is none of my business” is a slogan I’ve heard a lot in the past couple of years. It’s a good concept about boundaries, but still just a slogan.