I must write again. All these ideas in my head must be recorded for my own sake so I can make sense out of them. I've been thinking that my whole life, but I've never had the necessary drive to sit down and write on a regular basis. E2 gave me that drive, but for the wrong reasons. Well at least I think they're the wrong reasons.
Shamefully I admit the lure of the XP/reputation system, the symbolic gauge of progress that provides the all-too-much needed instant gratification. The same type of attraction that has slowed the pace of my achievement throughout my life, ironically has an ability to motivate a very real goal of mine. E2 appeals for the same reason as computers, and video games, and drugs, and hacky sack, and any other of my intimate assortment of time-wasting activities and procrastination techniques. My greatest skill is wasting time.
Shouldn't I have some idea why? I am always in a struggle to make what I know to be the right choices with my time. Two things motivate me: accountability to others, and occasionally my own interior browbeating. And the older I get, the less accountable to others I find myself (or I feel anyway). I know there is some deep-seated issue here, something from my childhood or even my genetic structure itself. This is the thing I long to understand through my writing.
It took me quite a bit of soul search to arrive at this conclusion. As I plodded up through levels 1 and 2 I avoided daylogging for the most part because I thought Daylogs were somehow less important, and I didn't value their reputation because of the large amount of vote dumping that hits them (if not for the wider E2 connotation). Heck, maybe I even felt that daylogging would betray the utter truth of Reputation addiction.
But enough, if the XP system is what it takes to get me to write regularly, then so be it. However, I draw the line when it corrupts my own values. Therefore, from now on I node what I feel is personally important rather than what I think people want. I may not escape addiction, but I can sure as hell put it good use. The result may be so introspective and abstract that it only fits in Daylogs, but that does not decrease its value to me.