Uncertainty and Doubt

I put my blogroll back up and added some blogs to it. We'll see if they stay interesting.

I also finally found out where a lot of folks I know have been hanging out on Livejournal. In a way I'm glad to know this, but I also feel a bit left out that I had to find them myself. OTOH, I still don't really want to get on LJ -- to me there's something creepy about all the different levels of access and relying on someone else to give you a code. It smacks of junior high, when indeed I could feel lucky if I was just being left out instead of actively persecuted for the crime of being me.

But on the gripping hand, I really don't know if I want to be hanging out with all the folks I know. They're nice people, but the deep differences between them and I keep becoming more and more apparent. I get tired of all the casual insults and nasty jokes about people in my political party, when I don't ever say anything derogatory about theirs. There are dramatic differences in what we think is ethical behavior on many other topics, as well. Many of them are part of religions I honestly can't respect, and I get the feeling they don't really respect mine. We still have a lot of common ground in our feelings about music and literature, but...I always thought I'd keep growing closer to my old friends, not grow further apart.

I know I have a tendency to take offense easily and to be paranoid. I keep working on it. But I do wish I had more friends (other than my Constant Reader!) who shared my tastes and my morality, too. I want to be able to stop biting my tongue.