I slept fairly well last night, better than I have in recent memory although I still woke up stuffy and slightly congested. I'm wildly excited about the changes that can be made to the house. I'm hoping and praying that the future will bring greater health for this house and all of its occupants. It will be a slow journey, but we're on the right track. It's helping me to think about two of the men who advise treating life like a detective would, sorting through various clues to determine which of them have merit in pursuing. Last night I started going through my books. I cleaned out half of my cookbooks, honestly I could get rid of them all, but deep inside of me is the hope that someday I'll be able to make some of the recipes in them and actually eat those foods without getting sick.
Last night something strange happened. It didn't seem like a big deal at the time, but looking back, I think it was. Thanks to a conversation with user Chord I found myself going back to read things I had written here. While some of those memories weren't the greatest, and it showed me how often I write similar things in my daylogs, it also showed me how interested in other things I used to be. For the most part I save messages people send me. I have some from people who are dead, and others from people who no longer contribute to this site. Several users stand out in my mind as having said particularly cruel things about me and the things that I wrote.
Tolerance is a rare thing to find, the official celebration of Thanksgiving is over, but today I'm grateful that E2 exists and has become a lot more tolerant than it was in the past. I want to say something, but I'm not really sure how to phrase it. Maybe it isn't anything other than having to pick on others you deem lesser is a sad existence. I followed a story thread I started and found that I had deleted several writeups in the series for no good reason other than I was having a moment of self doubt. The wonderful thing about E2 is it offers people a chance to share what they've done with others. I personally feel as if the voting system is archaic and doesn't really serve a purpose, I'd like to trade that for a feedback system, but I'm not going to actively pursue this idea because I don't care that much.
I once read that successful people say no to a lot of things. I mull over that every once in a while. Sometimes I can be very focused, other times I feel that turning into a restrictive type of tunnel vision. Maybe what someone else wrote doesn't appeal to a particular person. I think it's important that many voices be heard. I feel that the individuality and variety is a strength, and I wouldn't want writeups I don't like or agree with to go away since I feel strongly that people are entitled to freedom of self expression even when it goes against beliefs I hold. The other day I discovered a user I wasn't familiar with previously. I went and started reading. It was really neat to see the author's work progress and become better.
There's a saying that practice makes perfect. For better or for worse this is a place for many to practice. There are hidden gems, pieces that address the culture, posts that have left with their authors, sometimes I go back to see writeups that aren't particularly interesting or well written with a ton of votes. Voting isn't necessarily an indication of quality. Votes depend on the whim of the voter, nobody's vote carries more or less weight than another's or at least I don't feel as if they should. Trying to win the approval of others is a sure way down a slippery slope in my opinion. Sometimes we need to explore controversial topics so we learn who we are in relation to other people.
I have a lot more to say, but I'm not really in the mood to dredge up the ugliness of the past. There were moments in there that I cherish, but a lot of it is my memories of how a couple of users and their views were allowed to bully and intimidate others. I survived that time, but I shouldn't have had to put up with abusive and hateful commentary which is different than someone not caring for what I wrote. There's really never a call to be rude or to say things that are deliberately unkind. I don't know why this is bothering me so much today, probably because I can still remember how that felt. In other unrelated news I'm listening to happier music. I can't remember how I stumbled on Italian disco from the 80s, but now that I have it I can't imagine life without it.