I, like others, probably spend too much time engaged on social media. It's hard to be disciplined about that when 1. you're battling anxiety, CPTSD, and an ingrained tendency to dissociate that was built up from early one and 2. you're a human being with predictable responses to certain stimuli that social media sites are extraordinarily good at setting off. 
 

In any event, this is not all a bad thing. In some ways many of us are using social platforms in much the same way earlier groups of humans used actual public and social spaces. It's unknowable at this moment if that will be good or bad in the long run (and I'm skeptical of assigning any value to it at all, frankly). But I do think there are some great things that can happen.  Sometimes I even manage to write something that seems important enough for me to want to share it more broadly. Some of my blog posts here started their lives as FB posts, and since I'd like to better keep track of some of these posts I'm creating a category here on the blog for them.

My aunt Condon taught me an important lesson early in the early stages of the computer age. Back before Zuckerberg even learned how to code anything, Condon schooled me in what I think the first lesson of the information age should be: NOTHING YOU EMAIL, POST ONLINE, OR MAYBE EVEN COMMIT TO A HARD DRIVE EVER GOES AWAY. A lot of people get tripped up by that. And for a long time I was somewhat fearful of that too.

​Until I realized that there's a wonderful flip side to that truth. If everything I write has a way to be shared/seen/etc, that means I can treat my own posts as already published texts in a way. As such, I try to be conscientious about what I say, and how I say it online. My FB privacy setting is almost always set to public. If I have something to say that I would be afraid to have blasted on every newspaper and television screen around the world... then maybe I shouldn't commit it to a publicly viewed platform. 

On the other hand, I've learned over the years that many of the comments I've made, and posts I've published on social media have helped a lot of people. I've come to think that a lot of times what we're doing when we post stuff online is akin to tossing out seeds on the ground as we pass by. Sometimes a seed might find a nook to wedge into, and given some rain and sunshine, grow into a source of nourishment, shelter, and/or beauty for others. It would be presumptive in the extreme to believe that my writings and ramblings deserve to be collected and published in more traditional ways, but that shouldn't keep me totally silent either. As I say on my homepage here, sharing stories is the beginning of our healing. This is just another means for me to do that. 

One thing that I also want to make clear - yes I intend to put all my thoughts about trauma and living and ethics all together someday. But as I'm still in the midst of my own healing, and trying to live a semi-normal life, hold down a job that's not conductive to writing (it's hard to build stages and draft books at the same time), be married, and all that other stuff "normal" people do I think the best I can do for now is highlight some of the things I have shared in the modern agora that is social media. So anyway... that's my story for now. 

By the way, if you want to find me on Facebook or Twitter, click the links.