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Happy ljversary to me!
According to the automated email LJ sent me, today is the 20th anniversary of me getting an LJ! Which means we've just missed the point when I've officially had an LJ for half my life, which is kind of mind-boggling. When I was a kid and preteen I always wanted to be the sort of person who kept a diary (or, at least, the sort of person who left one behind in a secret room, for a future kid to find and read to unravel a century-old mystery) but I could never sustain it, I'd make it a couple weeks and then lose steam. Somewhere are a bunch of notebooks with one or two youthful journal entries from me. And yet here I am, twenty years into adulthood, and I've journalled on average more than once a week that whole time!
The difference of course is you all - even when I don't want to write anything (and there have been months-long stretches when I haven't, usually a sign I am depressed enough that I think I don't deserve for anyone to hear what I have to say) - even then, I want to read about what the rest of you are up to, and that keeps me connected enough to come back.
And I just want to shout out to all the people on here who post regular daily-life diary entries even when it seems like nothing much is happening for long stretches. I don't comment on those kinds of posts as much as I should, but I read them, and you have, probably literally, saved my life. A post about three things that made you happy today or what your cats have been up to or how your boring job is going or what the birds in the park had to say or what you bought at the farmer's market for lunches this week is the best reminder that life keeps going and it's good that it keeps going when I need that reminder.
I always tell myself I should post more daily-life stuff and then I end up posting several thousand words about gen tag usage on AO3 or something instead. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Reading back that twenty years of my blogging probably wouldn't give most people much of an idea of what's actually happening in my offline life (although I often, consciously or subconsciously, stick in enough hints for *myself* that back reading is an experience, so there will not be some kind of retrospective today, sorry.) But actually the original reason I got an lj was planning to do more RL-based posts (the time when a classmate found my LJ and used that to figure out exactly where I would be on campus the next so they could corner me and confess their undying love largely cured me of that.) The final impetus was wanting somewhere I could publicly post "I am going to go wandering in the woods today" so that if I never wandered back out of the woods people would know where to look, but that has been less relevant to my future life than I ever expected. (I do go wandering in the woods at least a couple times a month lately, but it's the group text that gets the notifications and photos usually, sorry.)
That was early enough that I needed an invite, and invites were still pretty hard to come by. I didn't have much in the way of fandom friends I could ask for something like that and all my RL friends had run out months ago, so I ended up getting one via a friend of a friend of a friend. I haven't though about that in ages; all of those people moved on to Facebook years and years ago and I never did. But it's a reminder that for all that people talk about how the move to invite-only Discords is a step back, in the early days of LJ fandom it was at least as hard for people who didn't know anyone yet to jump in. You could, at least, read the discussion (when it wasn't locked) but you couldn't take part unless someone invited you in.
Anyway it is *also* very nearly the first Shellyversary already (I had to make her yearly vet appointment this week, she's going to be so scared, I don't think she ever had routine vet visits with her old people so her only association with them is the time around when she was at the shelter) and I haven't posted enough Shelly lately either, so here is a Shelly.
The difference of course is you all - even when I don't want to write anything (and there have been months-long stretches when I haven't, usually a sign I am depressed enough that I think I don't deserve for anyone to hear what I have to say) - even then, I want to read about what the rest of you are up to, and that keeps me connected enough to come back.
And I just want to shout out to all the people on here who post regular daily-life diary entries even when it seems like nothing much is happening for long stretches. I don't comment on those kinds of posts as much as I should, but I read them, and you have, probably literally, saved my life. A post about three things that made you happy today or what your cats have been up to or how your boring job is going or what the birds in the park had to say or what you bought at the farmer's market for lunches this week is the best reminder that life keeps going and it's good that it keeps going when I need that reminder.
I always tell myself I should post more daily-life stuff and then I end up posting several thousand words about gen tag usage on AO3 or something instead. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Reading back that twenty years of my blogging probably wouldn't give most people much of an idea of what's actually happening in my offline life (although I often, consciously or subconsciously, stick in enough hints for *myself* that back reading is an experience, so there will not be some kind of retrospective today, sorry.) But actually the original reason I got an lj was planning to do more RL-based posts (the time when a classmate found my LJ and used that to figure out exactly where I would be on campus the next so they could corner me and confess their undying love largely cured me of that.) The final impetus was wanting somewhere I could publicly post "I am going to go wandering in the woods today" so that if I never wandered back out of the woods people would know where to look, but that has been less relevant to my future life than I ever expected. (I do go wandering in the woods at least a couple times a month lately, but it's the group text that gets the notifications and photos usually, sorry.)
That was early enough that I needed an invite, and invites were still pretty hard to come by. I didn't have much in the way of fandom friends I could ask for something like that and all my RL friends had run out months ago, so I ended up getting one via a friend of a friend of a friend. I haven't though about that in ages; all of those people moved on to Facebook years and years ago and I never did. But it's a reminder that for all that people talk about how the move to invite-only Discords is a step back, in the early days of LJ fandom it was at least as hard for people who didn't know anyone yet to jump in. You could, at least, read the discussion (when it wasn't locked) but you couldn't take part unless someone invited you in.
Anyway it is *also* very nearly the first Shellyversary already (I had to make her yearly vet appointment this week, she's going to be so scared, I don't think she ever had routine vet visits with her old people so her only association with them is the time around when she was at the shelter) and I haven't posted enough Shelly lately either, so here is a Shelly.
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Shelly says Hi back!
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Right? There's a reason I just post photos most of the time! She is soft and warm and beautiful and perfect in every way, even when she hairballs on the carpet, how can I summarize the rest in just a few paragraphs? (That said I do love read other people's cat stories!)
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the best reminder that life keeps going and it's good that it keeps going when I need that reminder
That's actually a really nice thing to hear. I post a lot of RL meandering in my own journal because I have no longterm memory and it's useful for me, but I'm always a little confuzzled as to why people who don't know me in RL keep reading. People who *do* know me in meatspace don't keep reading! But it's lovely to hear that sort of life chronicling can make a difference to someone who isn't commenting but actually does get something out of it. May you continue to find people whose tidbits of life keep you going when you need it.
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So glad to see you here. Happy LJversary!
the time when a classmate found my LJ and used that to figure out exactly where I would be on campus the next so they could corner me and confess their undying love largely cured me of that.
omg, what? no! /o\
And I'm with
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Also, please convey some scritches and pats to Shelly from me.
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and this made me go back to check how old my (now mostly abandoned) LJ is - 20 yrs back in december. i got an invite from a Stargate fandom friend - who i still periodically randomly hear from every few years or so when they comment on something.
i used to post a lot more in my journal space... i think a lot of the reason i don't so much now is that i don't hate my job. i have quite a few exasperated 'y is job' posts =)
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I actually got my first LJ before they started doing invites. Then when they started with invites and I wanted to make a new journal for a different fandom, I was able to use my first journal to give myself an invite for the new one.
I never was interested in having a diary as a kid. There were a few times when someone gave me one as a Christmas present and because I'd read so many books where people kept diaries, I thought I'd give it a try, but I don't think I ever wrote more than one page before abandoning it.
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Happy 20th Anniversary!
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I got my first LJ back when I lived in Toronto, and yeah, used it for RL and get-together stuff. It was really nice to have a zero-pressure place to just idly post "hey, I'm going for crepes tomorrow if anyone wants to come". (Then when I fell in love with Fruits Basket I didn't want to bore my non-/less-fannish friends and set up my umadoshi account there.)
(the time when a classmate found my LJ and used that to figure out exactly where I would be on campus the next so they could corner me and confess their undying love largely cured me of that.)
Infinite NOPE. o_o
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Wow. We are old. ;P
Community comes in all shapes and sizes and degrees of...involvedness. I also am an inveterate lurker, and I was mostly on Tumblr for a good while, before being reminded lately that I like what DW offers and coming back to do more of what I'm tentatively labeling "personal journaling". It's comfy. You're part of the comfy, for me. :) And it's nice to be reminded that even though I'm just rambling about cherry blossoms and 20-year old video games, maybe I'm part of the comfy for someone else. This is how DW rolls.
Please tell Shelly that she looks very pretty and soft. <3
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When I first got an LJ, I thought I would post a lot more pithy essays and reviews. Nowadays, it's almost all slice of life.
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And thank you for your thoughts on people blogging the mundanity of their daily lives. I often think there isn't much of interest in mine, but that's not at all the way that works, is it?
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I remember when LJ, Gmail, and DW all had invite codes. //crumbles into a pile of dust
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EDIT: whoops, my 20 year LJversary was in February, lol. I wonder why I get emails from them for random RPG sock journals but not for my main.
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And a lovely Shelly picture!! I hope the vet appointment isn't too scary :)
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(Anonymous) 2023-07-23 08:21 am (UTC)(link)(*: well, except for this last day or two I’ve been nostalgic, and this comment, many years later, which I’m already regretting as I type it**, so I think I’m gonna stop reading anything else for the rest of forever now.)
(**: and, since I haven’t hit Post yet, I could easily just delete this, but that would just make too much sense, and that’s never been my strong point. Really sorry about that, too.)
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(Anonymous) 2023-07-23 08:54 am (UTC)(link)no subject
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(Anonymous) 2023-07-23 12:28 pm (UTC)(link)