LiveJournal and Life

[stoutfellow]

Normally, when I go to campus, I take my briefcase with me. Among other things, it usually holds a book for me to read during the bus ride to and from work. Today, however, we were nearly out of dog food and completely out of dog treats; I was going to have to pick them up on the way home. I buy dog food in twenty-pound bags, and carrying one while also burdened with a briefcase is... let's say "clumsy" and leave it at that.

So. On the way home today, instead of reading, I was gazing absently out the bus window, thinking of various things. At one point, the bus stopped for a bit due to a traffic tie-up. I was in the middle of mentally composing a letter when, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that there was a plover - a killdeer, I think - wading in a drainage ditch by the side of the road. My automatic "Ooh, neat!" reaction was almost immediately joined by an effort to begin composing a livejournal entry about the sight.

I find this happening quite a bit lately; something interesting happens, and part of my mind immediately seizes on it as fodder for lj. I'm not sure whether this is a good thing. It is said that the unexamined life is not worth living, but this is not the examined life, but... what shall I call it? The edited life?

I'm reminded of the passage in Barrayar, when Cordelia arrives at her first Barrayaran social event, and is nonplussed to realize what she's missing - the crowds of reporters who would attend such an event back on Beta Colony, and the studied reactions of the participants, knowing themselves to be televised around the planet.

I don't know what to think, or whether I'm blowing up something trivial.

Comments

[hornedhopper.livejournal.com]

well, i guess we can all be thankful that our lj entries *aren't* on the 6:00 news; at least, i'm glad mine aren't! (g)

it could be an *edited* life, but i choose to think of the entries as shared vignettes. our "lunch table" is more geographically expanded than the one in the normal lunch area, but it contains people who actually are interested in what each other has to impart, as opposed to just whatever crowd happens to gather around the water cooler.

cool story about the plover!

[toraks.livejournal.com]

Hee hee! I think lots of LJers do the same thing. I certainly do, I mention it one of my posts today (the chainreading one). I agree with hornedhopper that it's not so different from planning things to tell your family or friends when you get home (or as hornedhopper said, at the "lunch table").

"You've all got to hear this *insert carefully planned out retelling of incident*"

It's just that maybe since we're actually writing/typing it out, we're a bit more mentally aware that's what we're doing.