1, 2, 3, 4 ... I Declare a Comment War

Okay, so this is a post I've been mulling over since Friday evening. It's not leaving my head so I feel the need to finally write it down.

I'm tired. I'm exhausted in fact. I'm tired of feeling like I constantly have to defend what I say, think or do to other people. It started ages ago with the whole Games Night fiasco ... thankfully that has died down - as one would expect when the people involved all just stop speaking to each other. Not an ideal resolution and it wouldn't have been my choice but I'm respecting other people's decisions here, so anyway. And then I wrote a post that got a fair amount of comment attention, far more than any other I've written for sure.

In fact, I even had a long conversation with JofH about this at lunch on Sunday. He writes a column expressly called Opinions that cause Trouble. Sometimes he's serious and truly believes what he's writing. A lot of the time, I think, he just knows which of society's buttons need pushing. He said he's just stopped reading the comments people leave on his posts altogether. Invariably (because of their own personal Sacred Cows), they misread something or take one of his comments completely out of context and end up lambasting him in the comments section. He feels the similar exhaustion I have at constantly commenting back, trying (in what becomes an exercise in broken-telephone) to explain that the commenter in question has missed your point entirely.

So here's what I have to say. I have never really outlined this previously on my blog anywhere, but I'm at a point where I feel it needs to be said. And please pay attention here to what I'm actually saying and not what you chose to read from these words.

This is *my* blog. My space online to say what I think and put my ideas and opinions out there. Mine. My ideas and opinions. And I have plenty of them, on restaurants I visit, movies I watch, books I read etc etc, the list goes on and on. Friday's post was no different, an opinion made up from my own experiences and thoughts on a subject. And I'm not trying to convince you one way or another with these opinions of mine. I'm merely saying what's on my mind and what I think about something.

Now, I realise I'm putting them up on a very public forum. And I am always thrilled to hear what the world out there (the ones who bother to read my insignificant little ramblings) has to say about it. If my opinion makes you try a new restaurant, that's fantastic :) If I hated the movie but you read the book and thought it was far better, by all means I want to know. And naturally if you think I'm wrong, you are equally welcome to share your views too.

But now here's the thing I want to be clear about. Share your views, positive or negative ... but don't for one second think that the comments you leave are a platform for you to convince anyone of anything. I don't want a comments section that turns into a half-hearted debate because debate, at very least, usually has a person's tone-of-voice in it's favour. Any comment (or post, for that matter) written will always be read in the tone the *reader* projects onto it.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is: Please share your views and differing opinions, but don't spend 800 lines trying to convert readers. That's not what this is about. Everyone is welcome to their opinion and a comment left on a blog somewhere is never going to change that. Hell, in some cases not even an entire afternoon's conversation with a person will convince them that they are wrong and your are right. So in future, if you miss my point entirely, I'm not going to bother trying to defend myself (or other commenters) in my comments section, it's just to exhausting emotionally for me. After all, this is my space.

Oh, and this post is not directed at any specific commenters from Friday's post, so please don't feel the need to defend yourself against this. It's more as "A Little Friendly Advice when Leaving a Comment" (and I imagine it should actually apply to any blog, not just mine) going forward :)

Last night was quiet, but Varen & I made it to gym and had a nice dinner at home. Sadly he's taking a bit of strain at work at the moment :( Other than that life continues as normal. Yesterday I did my first real work (post-training) at The New Job :)