public-facing mental-breakdown

13 Apr, 2026

sometimes i forget that even w/o toasts on a poetry post, people are reading them. my analytics are telling me over the past 30 days, my poetry blog has had 560 unique reads (how does bearblog know this?) and 241 unique visitors (same question here.) 30 days is also roughly when my crashout over my thesis/grad schools began.

granted, my blogs are usually quiet. most of the time there's zero visitors during inactive times, which seeing the discovery page makes sense.

the question becomes how my pseudo-anonymous poetry posts are going to affect my digital footprint. I know I like to silo my work and separate my accounts just as a consequence of semi-warranted paranoia and using an alias (kat/kathryn) but at the end of the day, with enough data aggregation and knowing common IP addresses that I post from, it is pretty reasonable to tie all my works to an individual (me.)

I've had people trace my accounts and find me from one type of account (shared PFPs and account names) but fortunately I try not to draw peoples' ire to dox me. or if they try, the get stuck on my alias and can't find anything further.

I do find myself screaming into a void, but unlike a void of say, a text document (that only the NSA¹) will read, I just blast this crap publicly. A public-facing mental breakdown, carefully curated and formatted for my writing pleasure. the void of the internet (bearblog) is an observant void, and until recently with my guestbook and contact integration, i've never given the void a chance to reply. it's only a matter of time before it does.

I will run out of crashout poetry at some point because at some point one will run out of things to crash out about. Afterwards, my viewer numbers will drop because I will post less and less poetry. Turns out, stress writing poetry isn't good for putting out a lot of writing when i'm not stressed! But the question then becomes why do I want to be writing poetry if my primary impetus is stress?

I think I like it that the void hears me. I like having an anonymous audience that isn't a paid government employee or close friends; I find there's something beautiful about being vulnerable to the world. I'm screaming into a void that hears my pain, my anguish, my joys, and my lamentations. perhaps the void cares, even if I don't know if it does.