Friend Connection Meme

Well, I hope my latest post didn't put you off! XD

Me, I'm the same - some personal details, so I fell connected, but constant details about some personal aspect can totally cause overload.

Thank you for posting this. I like your blog because it contains a lot of information that I find I can apply in my own life, including this meme.

I like your answers... I'll post mine at some point soon, although, I fear they'll be fairly similar :D

Funny how MONEY tends to be something to make a person stick out in our memory, eh? *snicker*

I tend not to post much regarding personal information about my private life. I've had some people complain about that, not understanding why I'm extremely private. I think I've just had too many instances of past actions coming back to haunt me (when I was a kid), and I've seen numerous instances of the Internet doing that to others. Last thing I need is the internet to be an easy reference guide on the details of my life, you know?

That pretty much matches my own list of yays and nays... with a few additions:

Less Connected:

Use of too much font change, color or larger/flashing graphics.

Too much vitriol. Doesn't matter the topic (politics is the frequent offender, but not the only...), if a blog is boo, hiss, hate, I start skipping all the entries and may eventually unfriend them. (Though this is pretty much a last-ditch, hardly-ever-happens thing)

Infrequent posts or comments. If I never hear from someone, I forget about them.

I am terribly guilty of this one lately...

I agree with most of the points you mentioned, now I have before, but answers such as these remained a bit elusive...or maybe I didn't have the right words.

Something that makes me feel more connected to an LJ Friend: when they respond to my comments in their blog and leave comments in my own blog. When only one of these two things happen, I feel as if I'm having a one-sided conversation with that person. That's a big disconnect for me.

Something that makes me feel less connected to an LJ Friend: when they are constantly negative. With "constantly" being the operative word here. ;)

Mine are fairly similar to yours. The bulk of people I've got friended are art related, so often a majority of the posts I read are photos or other art. I tend not to comment a lot to those, unless I feel I have something useful to say. (Likewise, most of the comments I get about my photos are something useful instead of "oh, another pretty picture. nice.") And I tend to only comment to written entries if I feel I can also be useful there. I think that varies a lot.

My other "put-off" item is in a similar vein to yours. By "too personal" I also tend to lump "too much 'real life'". I've had some people whose entries consist almost entirely of "Jane and I did X on Friday night, where we ran into Bob, Sam and Mike.... later Mike and I did Y and Z and I saw Mrs Smith and Mr Johnson and we talked about the show next week.." Unless I actually know a lot of people you do "in real life", I find this incredibly boring. It's different when people reference them, but if I need to keep a cast of characters to understand your journal I'm not really interested in it.

I don't think that I feel a great personal connection with you, but I do enjoy your entries sometimes- usually when they are poetry related. And recipes! A lot of times I don't know what to say in comments, and if other commenters have already said "well done" or whatever, what good would it be to say the same thing in different words when you've already heard it?

I like to throw away many grammatical rules when it comes to writing poetry, because I feel that in my case, too much concern over that becomes stifling.

My journal is personal, and I have had a few people who deleted me over things like that. It's pretty much all about me, me, me. Anything I want to blab about. But it's my journal and my true friends respect that. Based on what you said, I would not be surprised if my lj is of no interest to you.

Regardless, sometimes I do find awesome inspiration in your entries and I hope that you still want to stay friends!

Speaking of poetry... you might enjoy the novel I just finished, In Her Shoes. It was made into a movie but I skipped it when it came out since it looked stupid. Anyway, the novel focuses on the terrible relationship between 2 sisters, one who is plain but smart and successful, one who is gorgeous but always thought she was stupid due to a learning disability. They have a falling out and the stupid one runs off to Princeton bc she always wanted to be a student. She finds a quiet corner of the library and sets up a nest there and lives there for several months, finding ways to blend in and scavenge her food and other needs off the carelessness of others.

One of her activities involves sneaking into classes and sitting in the back, just to learn as well as to pass the time, and she discovers that she loves poetry, mainly bc her dyslexia means she cannot read fast, and poetry requires one to read slowly and discern the meaning. She finds she is good at that, better even than regular students. The author wrote in an interview in the back of the book that her favorite part of the book development was writing how this person who was always told she was stupid learns to discover reading and especially poetry.

Things move on from there but that part of the book was very interesting. Even after she has to run from Princeton she keeps up her voracious interest in poetry.

That sounds really interesting. I did hear about that movie but never saw it.

I could probably relate to the one character because I am dyslexic as well and that's one of the reasons I love poetry so much. The book sounds really interesting. Thank you for mentioning it. I will have to go to the library soon and check it out.

Someone already said something like this but... I very much enjoy reading your journal and often check out the links from the Gore challenge community as well as writing/writers' links however I almost never post because I see that you have many commenters who will have said the basics of what I might have said. I see that I have been applying personal journal rules (keep comment numbers easy to handle, don't reiterate something already said, etc.) to a business one.

I would also like to add that I have occasionally liked a poem of yours so well that I have interrupted my husband at work (works out of the home) to share it with him so that we could enjoy it together.