Labor Day Introversion

Labor Day, and I can't think of a thing to write.

Well, I can think of a lot of things--Greta Thunberg, the new Chinese Deepfake app ZAO, Amy Olberding's wonderful 20 Theses on Civility, and other stuff. But writing about these things, especially if one of them appears in a title, renders this post more likely to be found by Google search algorithms and read by, well, anyone. I'm not in a place where I feel ready to be read on any of those topics.

One of the Catch-22 features of this whole blogging exercise is that I produce work in a public forum that I fear the public might read. Every time I return to this blog's landing page for me, I get a list of posts, most of which have a comforting "0" in the columns for "times read" and "comments." That's to be expected. It's a huge internet. This blog makes few gestures loud or noticeable enough to catch any attention. Occasionally, though, for whatever reason, I'll get a hit--and I freeze up. Most of the time, my thought is, Thank goodness they didn't leave a comment!

I am, as several people point out, an introvert by nature. I can shift into extrovert mode in scenarios such as teaching, acting, and preaching, but on the whole social interaction with folk I don't know very well drains my batteries.

Unfortunately, I also crave positive reinforcement. The Will To Get An A is one of the main building materials of my psychic infrastructure. And, on some more mature level, I recognize that I'm in the business of creating outward-facing intellectual interventions. I write stuff for people to read. If I want to get an A in that, I have to practice writing stuff people can read. And I have to inure myself to the fact that not everyone reading will care to give me an A for it.

And on a still more mature--or maybe idealistic--level, I recognize that I write and work not to "make an A" but because what skills I have in thinking and scholarship might improve someone's life--but only if it gets beyond me.

Still, on days like today, days where I'm feeling down and tired, I'd rather just not risk being read. So I pass up talking about internet popularity as a superpower, the performance studies implications of deepfake casting-yourself-in-movies, or the careful pushback against valorizing righteous incivility.

I'll let that be labor for another day.

JF