Entry: The Fifty-Second--More Musings on LiveJournaldom
I had this amazing concept for a LiveJournal post. It was entertaining, educational, and topped off with gratuitous pictures of cephalopods. It had hyperlinks, footnotes*, and up the wazoo. It was to be a magnum opus, certainly in its depth and breadth, if not in the quality of the work. Let me give share with you a few choice sentences:
“ ‘That Thomas the Tank Engine is like heroin for little kids.’ ”
“Michigan: 147,255 sq. km.”
“If 1-800-JEFF-MAO is really 1-800-LED-FOAM, everything is turned on its head!”
“w00t, phonetics! w00t, progressive assimilation!”
“*awkward silence*”
Intriguing, no? Imagine what the rest of it was like! Full of drama, intrigue, and bizarre Swarthmore adventures!
Alas, that entry will not be seen today. Two pages in and I burnt out, not even halfway done. The remains were shoved into a Microsoft Word file full of half-written entries and unused inspiration material, a file now at eleven pages…eleven pages and growing.
I know, I know, none of you have this problem. You rip through memes like nobody’s business, and share your troubles in the blink of an eye. Raw, uncensored emotions mix with fickle quiz results in a devastating blend of truth and tragedy, of whimsicality and care for the sublime. It comes so easily to you, I suppose, this fancy art of LiveJournaling.
I appear to be different**.
My entries start their lives in this spiffy file called LJ Entr. (LJ Entr.doc, formally). They spend a couple hours/days being written, then usually get posted. Occasionally they’ll ferment for a year, then see the light of day. Other times they’ll stay longer (thus the eleven pages). Given this document’s ever so crucial role, I’m thinking it needs a cooler name. Right now I lean towards “Purgatory”.
(Aside: Wouldn’t that be a cool idea? I’m thinking I should give all my computer files evocative, metaphorical names rather than literal ones. For example:
Old Name: FMST Essay I.doc
Contents: Stupid, boring, painfully tedious essay on Citizen Kane for Intro to Film
New Name: The Iron Maiden!
Old Name: SC Platform.doc
Contents: Platform for failed campaign for Student Council Appointments Chair
New Name: Custer’s Last Stand!
Old Name: Phx Col II.doc
Contents: Phoenix Column on the Feminist Majority
New Name: Restrictive Undergarments!
And so on. And so forth)
The point is, journal output is at an all-time low. Meanwhile, half-written entries pile up in Purgatory like no-name corpses in a low-budget horror flick.
The bright side? I continue to make new friends-or at least, others continue to “friend” me. I’ve become a social butterfly during my LJ sabbatical. It’s the only explanation for the recent burst on my friended-by list. No longer do I spend nights hunched over the keyboard, painstakingly crafting artful prose; now I carouse and make merry, and form hosts of new acquaintances. (Acquaintances who subsequently become disillusioned with me due to lack of LJ’ing, I suppose. It’s a terrible cycle)
So what’s a stumped LJ-er like me to do? How can I reclaim these friends, rediscover my muse, and cease to grow my legion of half-damned typed-out “souls”? The answer is simple: return to my roots, to the topic that first intrigued me, fifty entries ago. I shall write again about LiveJournaling. I’m sure the result will be spectacular.
*Like this one
**In the Einstein sort of way, not the short bus sort of way. Or so I like to tell myself.
“ ‘That Thomas the Tank Engine is like heroin for little kids.’ ”
“Michigan: 147,255 sq. km.”
“If 1-800-JEFF-MAO is really 1-800-LED-FOAM, everything is turned on its head!”
“w00t, phonetics! w00t, progressive assimilation!”
“*awkward silence*”
Intriguing, no? Imagine what the rest of it was like! Full of drama, intrigue, and bizarre Swarthmore adventures!
Alas, that entry will not be seen today. Two pages in and I burnt out, not even halfway done. The remains were shoved into a Microsoft Word file full of half-written entries and unused inspiration material, a file now at eleven pages…eleven pages and growing.
I know, I know, none of you have this problem. You rip through memes like nobody’s business, and share your troubles in the blink of an eye. Raw, uncensored emotions mix with fickle quiz results in a devastating blend of truth and tragedy, of whimsicality and care for the sublime. It comes so easily to you, I suppose, this fancy art of LiveJournaling.
I appear to be different**.
My entries start their lives in this spiffy file called LJ Entr. (LJ Entr.doc, formally). They spend a couple hours/days being written, then usually get posted. Occasionally they’ll ferment for a year, then see the light of day. Other times they’ll stay longer (thus the eleven pages). Given this document’s ever so crucial role, I’m thinking it needs a cooler name. Right now I lean towards “Purgatory”.
(Aside: Wouldn’t that be a cool idea? I’m thinking I should give all my computer files evocative, metaphorical names rather than literal ones. For example:
Old Name: FMST Essay I.doc
Contents: Stupid, boring, painfully tedious essay on Citizen Kane for Intro to Film
New Name: The Iron Maiden!
Old Name: SC Platform.doc
Contents: Platform for failed campaign for Student Council Appointments Chair
New Name: Custer’s Last Stand!
Old Name: Phx Col II.doc
Contents: Phoenix Column on the Feminist Majority
New Name: Restrictive Undergarments!
And so on. And so forth)
The point is, journal output is at an all-time low. Meanwhile, half-written entries pile up in Purgatory like no-name corpses in a low-budget horror flick.
The bright side? I continue to make new friends-or at least, others continue to “friend” me. I’ve become a social butterfly during my LJ sabbatical. It’s the only explanation for the recent burst on my friended-by list. No longer do I spend nights hunched over the keyboard, painstakingly crafting artful prose; now I carouse and make merry, and form hosts of new acquaintances. (Acquaintances who subsequently become disillusioned with me due to lack of LJ’ing, I suppose. It’s a terrible cycle)
So what’s a stumped LJ-er like me to do? How can I reclaim these friends, rediscover my muse, and cease to grow my legion of half-damned typed-out “souls”? The answer is simple: return to my roots, to the topic that first intrigued me, fifty entries ago. I shall write again about LiveJournaling. I’m sure the result will be spectacular.
*Like this one
**In the Einstein sort of way, not the short bus sort of way. Or so I like to tell myself.