in the beginning, i wuz a kid and didnt rly care how i typed. although i did think sum alternate spellings were kewl n fun.
Then, I saw someone capitalizing and punctuating their sentences in an AIM chatroom called "hell". It blew my mind that you could do that, because I'd never seen anyone do that before. So I started doing it too.
then, some years after that, i became more aware that i was probably coming off as pretentious, and that this was not a good thing. i took a hard swing into lowercase-only.
and now I'm entering, possibly, a new period? maybe I capitalize "I" in some contexts and not just because autocorrect demands it? it's something i'm willing to try and yet it still feels like mimicry.
it's fascinating and very fucked up that the english language has created this conundrum for me — that somehow i've managed to read all this meaning into Big I and little i, and bought into this idea that it has ramifications on Who I Am Showing To The World.
because, i mean, i definitely buy that it does have ramifications. my worksona does not and would never use "i"! (my worksona is pretty inconsistent about other capitalization, although generally proper nouns get it.)
sometimes "I" feels like the trenchcoat i put on to be perceived as More Normal, and by Normal i mean Legible, and by Legible i mean going with the default rule means there's nothing for anyone to read a perplexing difference into, and thus i've successfully adopted my camouflage.
but by sometimes inhabiting "I", i find that "i", in contrast, is small. i'm just a little guy in here and sometimes idk if i always want to be a little guy in here, or if it's just what i'm used to.
well anyway I think there should be a new symbol to stand in for the singular first-person pronoun, like "Medium i", to signify me referring to myself in the subject position while I go through this little crisis I've invented. haha cool thanks
