(no subject)

Sometimes (like [to?][yester?]night at 2 am, but I was slightly tipsy then and much too tired and to actually write a lj-entry about it) I wonder why I write in English, and how, if at all, it affects what I write and how I think. How I appear to others. At least part of the this journal's raison dêtre is communication, message in the bottle - here I am, this is who I am, look at me, notice me, like me! - and English obviously assures at least the possibility to be heard/read by a wider range of people. But it goes beyond that, even when I kept a private paper journal (rather irregularly) during my late teens, early twenties, I mostly wrote in English. I did make a couple of attempts to switch to German, but it always sounded rather stilted and somehow wrong. It is easier to say some things in English, smoother, maybe; less painful in some occasions. Would it go to far to say that it creates a shield, a distance from what I am, an emotional safety zone; not only towards the world, but also towards myself? Am I the same person in English that I would be in German? Is the language a facade? Or does it matter at all? Am I more myself, because I can say things that I perhaps wouldn't say, or not like that, in German?



Hm.


::ponders::



[ETA, ca. ten minutes later: I try to be honest on this journal, mostly for my own sake; I might omit a few things that are too personal and embarrassing, I suppress the occasional urge to rant about petty things - but then, the suppression is as much part of my personality as the initial urge - but to the best of my knowledge I've never consciously lied here. Still, I perceive myself as less awkward in English, cooler somehow, more interesting, perhaps. What to make of that?]

(no subject)

Walking across the ice...