Most of the time I just think of people as my friends and I just naturally share ideas and ask questions. I just flow. I wouldn't want to over-analyze a thing like expression because that would take the point (and the fun) out of it. I want to flow now and always, and if that means that I might start a junk thread, I can just flow away from it and continue on unscathed. To me, expression is flow, not where you're flowing to.
When I'm in a more open and secure place (I mean internally, not my external environment), I'm like this. IRL I tend to view conversation as a place to learn. I love to ask questions to understand and learn how other people think about things. I also love to share how I think and then see how others interact with what I've shared. I tend to get completely immersed in the mutual flow and to question that flow tends to completely shut off the valve of expression for me.
I am shy and I learned early on in my life that any level of self-doubt will just completely shut me down and then that shut down feeds on itself because in the silence of lack of interaction I become even more convinced that no one would be interested in what I had to say if I said it anyway. When I force myself to shut down the part of my brain that worries about whether what I have to say is "good" enough and really just engage in the conversational flow, I find that the response is usually positive enough to keep going, but I'm still really sensitive to the self-doubt shutdown.
I've been pretty quiet here, partially because I've been recovering from a situation where my confidence and sense of self became shaken. It has, I think, all been a part of a growth curve. I had most of my life been careful about being aware of my environment and sensing what sorts of expression would likely be accepted or not and shaping my expression to be the most appropriate for a given environment. I began to grow frustrated with this fragmented presentation of self and wanted to present myself in whole without reserve in whatever situation I found myself in. I began to present more fully without the pre-analyzed reserve a couple years ago and felt the positive effect of being accepted by people for the whole of my presentation, but also felt the negative effect of being questioned for presentation that didn't meet with understanding or acceptance. Having sheltered myself from this sort of critique most of my life by sensing ahead of time what would or wouldn't be accepted and only presenting those things likely to meet with acceptance had left me somewhat fragile and weak in the reception of this lack of understanding. I found those fragile places in me became a bit emotionally beat up in the process. So I retreated to heal and my time here has been primarily during this time of retreat.
I haven't started many threads here, nor have I been very good about responding to them either. I've generally been too afraid of being misunderstood, knowing inside that I was still too fragile internally to deal with it. I feared that I wouldn't be capable of explaining myself adequately to be understood, nor capable of simply accepting that my perspective might still be valid even if challenged and never understood.
Ultimately I most value the abandonment of restraint for myself. I think the risk of posting some loser threads or responses is less dangerous than the cost of not engaging fully with the rest of humanity. And for me, it seems I need to either abandon that critical voice and go with the flow, accepting the bombs as part of the territory, or completely shut down.
I am hoping to open my conversational flow again, but I suspect it will be spurts of on and off still for a while while I figure out where the water pressure feels comfortable. (Uh, and feel free to ignore me if I become irritating in that process.
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from everyone 
