We’re all probably familiar with the Emerson quote addressing a foolish consistency. I think about it a lot because my mind is stuffed with hobgoblins, so I worry that my mental capacity is limited. Even if my mind is large, having so many hobgoblins bouncing around means that there’s less room for deep and important thoughts. I was curious about the difference between a regular goblin and a hobgoblin, and Merriam-Webster says a regular gobbo is grotesque, evil, and malicious while a hobbo is more like a playful troublemaker, so that’s comforting, I guess.
One of my hobbos insists that my profile needs to be consistent across platforms. I updated my profile on Instagram and Substack, which I can’t copypasta as it will change the font of the post (another hobbo!), but suffice to say that it’s perfect (until I change my mind). I can’t use it on FB though, since it’s over the character limit. Boo! I also can’t use it here because Google has separate categories for various items, and it wouldn’t make sense to smush them all into one box. I did fill out my Google profile similar to one I had years ago before a paranoid hobbo made me delete everything, and now part of it attaches to the end of each post. I guess that’s okay. It also doesn’t make sense to post all the things on my YouTube profile, so I didn’t, but at least what I did say is consistent with the other sites.
See what I mean? Instead of wasting time futzing with all this, I might have solved one of the math problems that have been vexing scholars for centuries or written a brilliant poem about butterflies or sketched a candle in a canoe.
Hobgoblins of this stripe are personifications of OCD. It's not that they characterize small minds, it's that they occupy too much of one's mind and leave only a small amount of capacity for other things.
ReplyDeleteI used to be like that about capitalizing words consistently, to the point of almost obsessing about it. Eventually I managed to convince myself that none of my readers would care or even notice if I didn't capitalize a word when I did capitalize it in a similar context five years ago. It can help to replace the hobgoblin with something more objectively important. I made it a goal to prioritize writing clearly rather than with robotic consistency. People do care if something is easy to understand.
Exuberantly leave those socks as crooked as possible, and eventually you will internalize the fact that it doesn't matter. And that your readers would rather have the butterfly poem.
Well, we have different "identities" based on who we are with and what we are doing IRL, so why wouldn't digital imitate life?
ReplyDeleteInfidel, I am the same re capitalization!
ReplyDeleteKeera, fair point! As I age though, it's hard enough to manage one identity, so I have given up being different characters in different settings :)