Say something, damn it!

As previously mentioned I'm feeling sad, and I don't know why.  I doubt that it's sad without a reason, but there are so many reasons for me to feel down right now that if I go looking for the reason I'll find so many as to drive me into sobbing sobbyness.  Part of the way I avoid getting crushed under the weight of everything that's wrong in my life is to not focus on the wrong.

So the sadness has remained, it's cause unknown and undealt with.

There have been good things, there have been happy spots, but they were momentary.  Ephemeral instances that once over left me back at the new normal of sad.

The rest of life isn't helping much.  Remember how I talked about wanting to write posts for the Slacktiverse?  Yeah, that looks like it'll never happen.  Perhaps, maybe, I can do something for whatever replaces it.  My family always seems to manage to bring me down.

There were other things I was going to say, but I've forgotten them*, and unlike some times that happens I haven't been called away or distracted, in the time that it took me to write "The rest of life isn't helping much," to the time it took me to get here, with nothing else in the way and typing at what I think is a pretty good pace, I've forgotten.  School I'm doing crap at, even if in class discussions are where I've been feeling most alive lately.

And I just realized I forgot a homework assignment that was due yesterday.  No makeup on that.

Anyway, all of the above is just introduction.

A string of words to get me to the point.

And the point is this:

Say something, damn it.

Recently, over at the Slacktiverse, someone wrote this:

@chris the cynic - I love and very much look forward to your witty comments and mini-stories, and I'd be excited to read posts written by you, if that means anything.  

Yes, it does mean something.  It means a lot.  Sometimes it means everything.

I responded that if there's one thing that I wish I could get across to the people reading here it's, "Say something, damn it!"  I've already tried saying that, though in different words, but I figured that, in light of my current case of sadness, I'd try again.

I know how many people look at a given page.  Sort of.  Actually I know how many times a given page is looked at.  One person looks at the same page ten times, or ten people look at it once, and it's all the same from my end, but regardless I know how many times something is viewed.

I don't know what any of the people viewing it are thinking.  I mean some of them get here by accident when searching for something else on Google and a can guess that they're thinking something along the lines of, "What the fuck is this?" but beyond that, I have no idea.

I don't know if people like what they see, I don't know if they hate it.  I don't know if the think it's brilliant, or horrible or the worst kind of mediocracy, or what.

The only way I know how you feel is if you tell me.

So please, for the love of god, tell me.  If you don't believe in god then for the love of psychology, or the love of sugar and spice and all things nice, or the love of me, or the love of something.

If ever I have written anything that you thought was worth reading, tell me.  Find that post and say whatever it is you liked about it.  If ever in the future I should write something that you like, tell me.

I don't want to disrespect those who have commented, I really appreciate it, especially the handful who do it regularly, and writing a post like this makes me worry that I'll alienate all of them and then I'll be stuck here completely alone just talking to myself until I realize that's a worthless endeavor and give up.

It's just... I'm needy alright.  I need validation because without it I'm left to my own devices and my own devices have been marinating in depression for over a decade and even knowing that doesn't change the way it feels when they tell me things that I don't want to hear.  So, yeah, it's the depression that makes me feel like everyone who doesn't comment on a post obviously thought it was a waste of their time reading it, but intellectually knowing it doesn't change the fact that it feels that way.

And even if I go, "Ok, clearly not everyone hated it," there's still a question of how many people didn't.  Ten percent?  One percent?

There were six comments on this post.  The first was a troll.  It's in the spamtrap now.  The second was me commenting on the oddness of that spesific troll, who generally goes after atheist sites, picking a Snarky Twilight post to troll.  The third was the troll repeating the exact same comment.  It's also in the spamtrap now.  The fourth was me saying that's really not hard for me to spamtrap spam on the off chance that saying that would make the troll realize that no matter how many times he copied and pasted the same rant, it would never stay up.

The fifth was actually about the post.

The sixth was me thanking the person for speaking up because now, finally, there was an on topic comment.

Six comments has to put it pretty far up there in terms of response, but two of them were trolling and three of them were me.  So, as far as I know, no one else, but that one person, saw anything of value in that post.  Maybe that's true, maybe it's not, but it's all I have to go on.

Other things have no comments whatsoever.  For all I know people clicked over, took one look at the thing, decided it wasn't even worth reading in it's entirety, and left.

So, please, if you have anything to say, even if you don't think it's important, say it.  On any post at all.  Old, new, whatever.  Just speak up.

Please.

-

* One of them, I remember now, was that the old blogger interface is gone.  The new one is better for writing and editing posts, which is important, unfortunately it's also ugly and very annoying if you're trying to find something you've already said (in the old one, on the page where posts are listed, I could expand a post to see what I said in it, on the new one I have to go to a separate page to do that), it's harder to navigate by tags because they're in a drop down menu instead of just listed along the side, the stats page is disgusting, and overall it's an incredible eyesore.

It seems to be designed to make anyone who looks at it for any length of time think, "Why the fuck did I choose to start my blog on blogger?"