A thoughtful post by someone I follow is making me once again ask myself why use this site and post minutia of my life on here, and how true and curated it all is.

I started writing things in this place to be some sort of outlet – both for my anxieties and fears, as I have no other good place to express them, and for recording the little things that I see that make me happy. A kind of recorded memory hoard that I could go back to in a few years when the world is more complicated but I am hopefully wiser, and remember the time when things were simpler yet, and I was less cynical.

The fact that only one person in my life knows about its existence (two, if counting a former classmate from a class where Tumblr was my case study), is what I thought would help me keep it honest.

also, I am not an artist, nor could I ever hope to be, so I shouldn’t really care about recognition, or really, what anyone would think.

However, the fact that it is open to the world, unlike a diary of simpler days, is what makes it different. She is right. Even here, it is hard, probably impossible, to refrain from curation and presenting an improved, but somewhat fake, version of oneself. Maybe it’s just what an average human is supposed to do. I still worry about being judged, even despite the level of anonymity this site affords (someone with skill and determination could figure out who am, but thankfully it would not matter to anyone but me). I still care about what others think, even, especially, because they are strangers. With a few exceptions (when they got picked up by popular tumblrs), my posts hardly get any notes, and the all-too-rare moments when I get to talk to someone on here, people completely different from me or anyone I know, are as precious as meeting a traveler from a thoroughly foreign place at a hostel, who you spend a whole night talking to, and who somehow magically understands everything about you. Then, you both get on your way, and nothing remains but memory and a sharpened sense of wonder. I will never know if I had a similar effect on others, but it is best I can hope for.

Just like the act of observing a subatomic particle forever fixes its state, the act of expressing thoughts in the open alters them, and, more importantly, it feeds back on myself and makes me different.
If that turns me into a little more like my curated version, even if it’s not entirely honest, maybe it’s worthwhile to keep posting on here, and maybe something good could come out of it.