A day in the life
I still dislike living in Outer Guam, but I really enjoy being only ten minutes (or less) from where I work (or "work"). It renders palatable days like this, on which I have supervision scheduled for 10am, and no clients before 5pm; it's lovely to come home for the intervening six hours, and not feel like I'm wasting the gas to do so.
In other news...
There has been much lamentation recently on my FList here about the perceived decrease in traffic through LJ: fewer posts to read, decreasing feedback on the posts that do appear. Some folks have defected to Dreamwidth on the basis of changes to LJ's corporate polices, and to them, I offer two thoughts:
I have a permanent account on LJ. I've also been around long enough to really understand the idea that there's no privacy in the electronic forae, no matter how much we like to pretend or wish it otherwise. I understand not everyone buys into the same reality, so those who feel entitled to have products they don't pay for conform to their comfort and security needs, will continue to product-hop from place to place. Me, I like it here, even as the response to posting dwindles as people drift away. To some extent, there is a cyclical nature to any group dynamic. In six years, the community I experience, which used LJ largely for connection and continuity between gatherings as a way of ostensibly developing and deepening relationships, became the Tribe, which then continued to evolve on and off the LJ platform. Many of us are going through sundry life experiences off-line that affect our time and ability to be online. Some, lacking any willingness to put their information into the insecure hands of networking sites, remove themselves from the platforms entirely, returning to a reliance on email or (ghods forfend!) the phone for information and notification of/invitation to social events. Others accept the risk and soldier on, perhaps tailoring the information made available, perhaps not caring at all.
It's all about choice, and making choices based in knowing the needs your choices are intended to meet. Me, I am a writer above all else. FB has its uses, but it's not a forum for writing. I use DW for a specific purpose, so it sees far less traffic from me on the stretches where I have nothing to write about in keeping with that purpose. Same with the further_ado account here on LJ. A number of my friends still rely mostly on LJ as a means of keeping up with the day-to-day "Hey, how's life going?" information as well as the deeper, thinky posts I used to write before grad school ate my brain. I've managed one such post since the end of classes, and there are more percolating, but as with many, my offline life is becoming a consistent-enough presence in my day to warrant spending more time there and less time here. Trust me when I say, *I* still read almost everything posted by my friends, though commenting time is still pretty sparse. Silence doesn't always equate with absence.
So are we in a transitional state? Absolutely. The LJ world, and my own Tribe community, have been through many such phases even in the six years I've been here. Some will tough it out, some won't. Some will migrate elsewhere and spend a great deal of time being frustrated by needing to go back and forth to keep up with those who don't follow the leader to temporarily-greener-pastures. Some, like lovecraftienne wrote a while ago, will be here until they turn the lights off and put the final locks on the server room doors. I'm in the latter camp, personally; the fact of having a permanent account means I don't share a lot of the most-commonly-frustrating user experiences that those with free/basic accounts do, and aside from the occasional service lag that is bound to happen on any server anywhere at any time for any number of reasons, I have no complaints about life here. I trust it within reasonable bounds (which is not an absolute trust), and I enjoy the breadth and depth of reading experience here, be it the lightweight fluff of someone's day-to-day experience, meirwen's adventures in the classroom, siderea's adventures in the psych industry (we commiserate over shared experiences), or the frequently provocative and challenging posts dicea and tacit put up: there's a lot of life here still on LJ if you know where to look and are willing to wait for it to appear.
If it's the immediate need for gratification or sound-byte-sized snippets of contact, this is not your venue of choice. This is a better venue for discourse and dialogue, in my experience, for philosophical reflection on weightier matters. Not that even I use it that way all the time, but I certainly get a different value, if not more value (personally) out of using the blog formats over the FB format (and if I'm getting minimal value out of FB, you can bet it's going to be an even longer time before I see the value in Twitter.) Individuals will find their own combination of venues as befits their individual needs. I plan on being here for a while, so drop by if you feel inclined, read what you care to, drop a comment if you wanna. If you don't wanna or don't have time, that's cool too, since I'm still mostly here for my own sake and record than for anyone's feedback. If in time everyone I know and love has moved on to different pastures, I may follow, I may not. I may just continue on here amidst the peace and quiet of the crickets chirping, watching the light fade from the LJ sky until darkness envelops what's left. And that's okay, too. I can celebrate what has been as well as I can celebrate what might be yet to come, online or off.
In other news...
There has been much lamentation recently on my FList here about the perceived decrease in traffic through LJ: fewer posts to read, decreasing feedback on the posts that do appear. Some folks have defected to Dreamwidth on the basis of changes to LJ's corporate polices, and to them, I offer two thoughts:
- To some extent, you get what you pay for. If you are dissatisfied with your free/basic account, consider paying for a service you might want to continue using. Feeling entitled to something you're getting for nothing is a really craptacular way of guaranteeing value in a product, IMO. Witness the foibles of FB, for example...
- Dreamwidth now is much like LJ was when I joined LJ in 2003 at hel_ana's suggestion. This is great, on the surface, but suggests that the future may hold as many unpleasant decisions and actions for the DW team as some people feel it has for LJ. What are you all going to do 6 or 7 years from now when that product, too, succumbs to the pressures of user-demand for services it can only provide for fee, not free?
I have a permanent account on LJ. I've also been around long enough to really understand the idea that there's no privacy in the electronic forae, no matter how much we like to pretend or wish it otherwise. I understand not everyone buys into the same reality, so those who feel entitled to have products they don't pay for conform to their comfort and security needs, will continue to product-hop from place to place. Me, I like it here, even as the response to posting dwindles as people drift away. To some extent, there is a cyclical nature to any group dynamic. In six years, the community I experience, which used LJ largely for connection and continuity between gatherings as a way of ostensibly developing and deepening relationships, became the Tribe, which then continued to evolve on and off the LJ platform. Many of us are going through sundry life experiences off-line that affect our time and ability to be online. Some, lacking any willingness to put their information into the insecure hands of networking sites, remove themselves from the platforms entirely, returning to a reliance on email or (ghods forfend!) the phone for information and notification of/invitation to social events. Others accept the risk and soldier on, perhaps tailoring the information made available, perhaps not caring at all.
It's all about choice, and making choices based in knowing the needs your choices are intended to meet. Me, I am a writer above all else. FB has its uses, but it's not a forum for writing. I use DW for a specific purpose, so it sees far less traffic from me on the stretches where I have nothing to write about in keeping with that purpose. Same with the further_ado account here on LJ. A number of my friends still rely mostly on LJ as a means of keeping up with the day-to-day "Hey, how's life going?" information as well as the deeper, thinky posts I used to write before grad school ate my brain. I've managed one such post since the end of classes, and there are more percolating, but as with many, my offline life is becoming a consistent-enough presence in my day to warrant spending more time there and less time here. Trust me when I say, *I* still read almost everything posted by my friends, though commenting time is still pretty sparse. Silence doesn't always equate with absence.
So are we in a transitional state? Absolutely. The LJ world, and my own Tribe community, have been through many such phases even in the six years I've been here. Some will tough it out, some won't. Some will migrate elsewhere and spend a great deal of time being frustrated by needing to go back and forth to keep up with those who don't follow the leader to temporarily-greener-pastures. Some, like lovecraftienne wrote a while ago, will be here until they turn the lights off and put the final locks on the server room doors. I'm in the latter camp, personally; the fact of having a permanent account means I don't share a lot of the most-commonly-frustrating user experiences that those with free/basic accounts do, and aside from the occasional service lag that is bound to happen on any server anywhere at any time for any number of reasons, I have no complaints about life here. I trust it within reasonable bounds (which is not an absolute trust), and I enjoy the breadth and depth of reading experience here, be it the lightweight fluff of someone's day-to-day experience, meirwen's adventures in the classroom, siderea's adventures in the psych industry (we commiserate over shared experiences), or the frequently provocative and challenging posts dicea and tacit put up: there's a lot of life here still on LJ if you know where to look and are willing to wait for it to appear.
If it's the immediate need for gratification or sound-byte-sized snippets of contact, this is not your venue of choice. This is a better venue for discourse and dialogue, in my experience, for philosophical reflection on weightier matters. Not that even I use it that way all the time, but I certainly get a different value, if not more value (personally) out of using the blog formats over the FB format (and if I'm getting minimal value out of FB, you can bet it's going to be an even longer time before I see the value in Twitter.) Individuals will find their own combination of venues as befits their individual needs. I plan on being here for a while, so drop by if you feel inclined, read what you care to, drop a comment if you wanna. If you don't wanna or don't have time, that's cool too, since I'm still mostly here for my own sake and record than for anyone's feedback. If in time everyone I know and love has moved on to different pastures, I may follow, I may not. I may just continue on here amidst the peace and quiet of the crickets chirping, watching the light fade from the LJ sky until darkness envelops what's left. And that's okay, too. I can celebrate what has been as well as I can celebrate what might be yet to come, online or off.