For the past few month, I’ve had quite a few ideas for blog posts that remain reluctantly unwritten. The main reason was that this blog was being imported into my facebook, and although this is a public blog, I didn’t want those posts to be ‘announced’ to my facebook friends.
There is a fear that having them see those posts might make them change their opinions of me–for better or for worse. Although those people might find and read my posts here anyway, I feel more comfortable writing if it isn’t announced to everyone I know. Realistically, this fear is purely psychological, the ‘threat’ isn’t there. Most of my friends won’t read what I write, and even fewer if any will judge me on what I write. Besides, what do I care if someone judges me about what I write? Fear is irrational sometimes, but as a [de]motivator, it is much more powerful than reason.
The limbic sytem of our brain that controls our emotions and behavior has been around since the mamalian brain. It governs our instinctive behavior towards fear which is to mitigate the threat that’s triggering the fear. It’s constantly making subconscious judgements about the enviroment to regulate our emotions. When I’m aware that my post will be announced on facebook, my insecurity about what I’m writing creates a sense of fear and I respond instinctively by ceasing my writing efforts. The pre-frontal cortex of the brain controls the higher level reasoning and planning associated with the modern human behavior. It is much slower than the limbic system, but it is much better at long term decisions. My analysis of my insecurity revealed that my limbic system has made an irrational decision about ceasing my writing efforts. The threat simply didn’t exist. Yet I realize that the limbic system has a much greater control over our behaviour as a response to our emotions. The prefrontal cortext has more control over our behavior when we’re not experiencing any strong emotions like fear, anxiety or anger, and without those emotions, we can make better decisions. Otherwise, the response chemicals released by the limbic system is too strong and as a result we might behave irrationally.
I have this blog here for 4 reasons:
1. To improve my writing skills.
2. To rant about things that are interesting, annoying, remarkable, [insert adjective] to me.
3. To reveal more about who I am to friends and the world.
4. To bookmark thoughts that I have had that might be useful to me or anyone else in the future.
Having these posts published on facebook automatically was keeping me from doing 1 and 2, but it does do 3. Removing it from automatic posting will trade 3 for 1 and 2, And given that those 4 things are arranged roughly according to importance, I think it’s a good trade off, especially if it means more posts here more often.
