#the biggest tmi on this blog so fsr

[reflections-in-a-critical-eye]

Welcome back. Took me a few secs there, haha, with the blog name changed.

Were you still following everything or did you completely detach from kpop while you were away? Just curious.

Hmmm, this is complicated, but I guess being honest about it will do more good than acting detached. Which used to be my spiel back in the BMT days. Not that I was pretending to be someone who I'm not, but a lot of the stuff I wrote and especially how I did was the result of filtering my emotions and reactions through a rational lens. I do that in my day to day life as well, so it's an actual problem, not only the way I present myself as fandom participant.

My initial plan was complete detachment because I ended up hating it. For so many reasons that I don't even remember all of them now. I really wanted a clean slate, but it's not as easy as I thought. I went back to my old blog which consisted mostly of the stuff I reblog now here with the films and pretty photos. I also unfollowed all the fandom-related accounts on twitter. And I tried to go back to my other passions, especially film. And reading some literature instead of wasting hours on a blog. It worked. Until it didn't. Because complete detachment is hard. Like I said in my first post after coming back, giving up smoking was easier. This is another type of addiction. Yes, it is. Is it shameful to admit that? I don't know, but I also don't care much about it and what others think of me based on this.

I closed the blog the day Jimin released Face, but I told myself I would still follow his promotions. And that I can follow one or two Jimin update accounts on twitter and that's it. But it was never just that. Because I still heard stuff here and there and my stupid curiosity got the worst of me and I would look it up and then I'd see opinions. Which is the worst when you try and stay from discourse. And then I would unfollow everything. And then I would go back to it a week, two weeks later. A constant cicle. Which annoyed me to bits. I was angry with myself because I thought I had no will. And it seems so silly in the grand scheme of things, when stuff in my personal life was a lot more important. Perhaps one issue was me always trying to dismiss my participation and contribution to the fandom as something frivolous when it was not. I dedicated time to it for the wrong and good reasons as well.

Tumblr was even worse than twitter. I would check some tags, block accounts that would annoy me and then I would log out. I'd get back to it and look up my blocked list and go through it. As an act of self hate? I don't know, but it was like I wanted to get angry. I was chasing that feeling. All the while telling myself that I don't want to have anything to do with it anymore.

Do I have a problem? Most likely. I know I never had these issues before, but this is the result of my first direct involvement in a fandom and also happening during a period of my life in which a lot of things have changed. And I'm trying to deal with all that and one way of doing it is by focusing on the objects of my interest. I'm still trying to find the answers, solutions, a more healthy way. Rebranding the blog by making it more diverse is one attempt.