Stephen Bahl and this journal
Last night, I started an unusual entry in this journal. I knew it would take a while, but I kept working on it. For some reason, my computer slowed down to a crawl (it's been performing poorly lately, so today I cleared up some diskspace and defragmented, but I think having Skype open might have been taking up too much memory, so we'll see) while this was happening. Writing the entry involved copying and pasting and bolding and italicizing and other fun stuff. It was taking forever. By the time it got to be around 4:00 in the morning, I decided that I absolutely had to go to bed. Remembering that LJ had failed to save one of my drafts once before, I decided to post the incomplete version and finish it later. No good. I got a message saying that the entry was too long.
I have never gotten that message before, and I have posted a few really long entries in the past. I am convinced that the limit, and I don't even know where the boundary is, was not there in the past. I don't know how long it's been there, but it can't have been there the whole time. I would have run into it before. I ended up saving the incomplete entry on WordPress, but I don't know if I'll ever finish it or post it anywhere. After I woke up, I found it somehow unsatisfactory. We'll see.
This has made me realize some other things. I can only view the 16 most recent entries on my friends page. That was not the case in the past. I forget how long ago and how much further back I could go, but it has definitely changed. And there used to be a search function. Now, when I want to search my own journal, I have to do it manually. And, you know, I've always hated those stupid writer's block things, but every once in a while I've done them to make fun of them. I can't do that anymore, because LJ is unreliable about actually giving me the prompt as a quote in my entry when I try to do so.
I have been on LJ for almost six years. But I don't know if I want to do it anymore. The appeal of this thing was that my friends were doing it. I could go on my friends page and comment on what they were writing. They could comment on my entries. And, although I suppose I could have done whatever I wanted, I made it feel like my own little corner of the world. Sometimes I would write long posts about my life. Sometimes I would write book reviews. Sometimes I would write nonsense because I felt like it. Sometimes I would just post links to other websites and nothing else. It was my journal. I could do what I wanted.
It's not that I'm nostalgic for the good old days. But the thing about my friends page changed. It didn't happen overnight. Some people just chose to close their accounts. Other people moved on to other sites, even if they weren't quite the same. By now, this place seems like a dying town. My friends page, instead of having posts by, well, my friends, is mostly stuff from LJ communities I've joined. It's the sort of thing I can get on Google Reader or whatever, but there's not even very much of it. Well, now the other detail seems to have changed too. This doesn't feel like it's mine anymore. I have restrictions. My posts can't be too long. If I wanted that, I'd post on fucking Twitter or something.
And that leaves me wondering if it's worth it. Should I leave too? The appeals it had in the past are gone. I'm here because I've been here for six years, not because I really want to be. My link to this place is in the past. It seems that other sites, like Blogger or WordPress, have become objectively superior, at least for my purposes. In a way, I don't know. I have a Blogger that I do update, although only for chemistry-related things, but it feels like a stage. The auditorium might be empty or it might be full, that doesn't matter so much to me. I am on a stage, and anyone else is the audience. I could lecture. I could sing. I could do a one-man skit. But it would be one-man for sure. I'm alone on the stage. LJ wasn't like that. LJ was a neighborhood. Sure, I controlled my own yard, but I could let other people in. I could go in their yards. Maybe sometimes no one would be listening. Maybe sometimes I would draw a crowd or I would be part of a crowd someone else was drawing. Losing all of my neighbors doesn't necessarily end it. Even if everyone else packed up and left, I would still be in the same place, maybe talking to ghosts. But now there are stipulations. I don't control my own yard anymore. Or something.
All the good things that are left here are in the past. So maybe I'm a little nostalgic, but that's not what I'm talking about. The past will continue to be there. But I don't need to stay here to have that. But I still don't know. I want a place to have my one-word posts and my book reviews and my real journal entries and my nonsense walls of text and whatever else suits me. I don't just come here out of habit. This place has worked for me, even if I'm now thinking that it no longer does. So where do I go from here? Do I ignore the shit I'm annoyed by and work around it? Do I pack up and leave for good? I could just as easily be using a Blogger or WordPress or something. I don't know. I feel a tug of war between my impulse to build something new and better and my six years of history. I started this damn project when I was still in high school! I didn't know where it was going back then and I still don't know where it's going.
Right now, I feel like I'll do whatever it takes to become a real chemist. That is my aspiration. But I still, in some way, want to be a writer. I've always wanted to be a writer, even when I've had nothing to write about. That is the motivation behind a lot of what I do. I really believe that writing something, anything, is better for me than not writing. That is often the primary consideration in what I do. I was seriously overjoyed at the couple of comments I received on my chemistry blog stating that what I'd posted had been helpful. No really, I was overjoyed. Moreso than might be considered sane by some standards. But I don't mind talking to ghosts. I find them to be company enough and look at most of this stuff as leisurely practice for my writing skills. But that's not my motivation with this entry. I really don't know what to do. It seems trivial in some sense. Writing here or writing somewhere else is still writing.But I still can't decide. The tug of war continues.
If you actually read all that, you must know me pretty well, otherwise you wouldn't have sat through it. So, what do you think?
I have never gotten that message before, and I have posted a few really long entries in the past. I am convinced that the limit, and I don't even know where the boundary is, was not there in the past. I don't know how long it's been there, but it can't have been there the whole time. I would have run into it before. I ended up saving the incomplete entry on WordPress, but I don't know if I'll ever finish it or post it anywhere. After I woke up, I found it somehow unsatisfactory. We'll see.
This has made me realize some other things. I can only view the 16 most recent entries on my friends page. That was not the case in the past. I forget how long ago and how much further back I could go, but it has definitely changed. And there used to be a search function. Now, when I want to search my own journal, I have to do it manually. And, you know, I've always hated those stupid writer's block things, but every once in a while I've done them to make fun of them. I can't do that anymore, because LJ is unreliable about actually giving me the prompt as a quote in my entry when I try to do so.
I have been on LJ for almost six years. But I don't know if I want to do it anymore. The appeal of this thing was that my friends were doing it. I could go on my friends page and comment on what they were writing. They could comment on my entries. And, although I suppose I could have done whatever I wanted, I made it feel like my own little corner of the world. Sometimes I would write long posts about my life. Sometimes I would write book reviews. Sometimes I would write nonsense because I felt like it. Sometimes I would just post links to other websites and nothing else. It was my journal. I could do what I wanted.
It's not that I'm nostalgic for the good old days. But the thing about my friends page changed. It didn't happen overnight. Some people just chose to close their accounts. Other people moved on to other sites, even if they weren't quite the same. By now, this place seems like a dying town. My friends page, instead of having posts by, well, my friends, is mostly stuff from LJ communities I've joined. It's the sort of thing I can get on Google Reader or whatever, but there's not even very much of it. Well, now the other detail seems to have changed too. This doesn't feel like it's mine anymore. I have restrictions. My posts can't be too long. If I wanted that, I'd post on fucking Twitter or something.
And that leaves me wondering if it's worth it. Should I leave too? The appeals it had in the past are gone. I'm here because I've been here for six years, not because I really want to be. My link to this place is in the past. It seems that other sites, like Blogger or WordPress, have become objectively superior, at least for my purposes. In a way, I don't know. I have a Blogger that I do update, although only for chemistry-related things, but it feels like a stage. The auditorium might be empty or it might be full, that doesn't matter so much to me. I am on a stage, and anyone else is the audience. I could lecture. I could sing. I could do a one-man skit. But it would be one-man for sure. I'm alone on the stage. LJ wasn't like that. LJ was a neighborhood. Sure, I controlled my own yard, but I could let other people in. I could go in their yards. Maybe sometimes no one would be listening. Maybe sometimes I would draw a crowd or I would be part of a crowd someone else was drawing. Losing all of my neighbors doesn't necessarily end it. Even if everyone else packed up and left, I would still be in the same place, maybe talking to ghosts. But now there are stipulations. I don't control my own yard anymore. Or something.
All the good things that are left here are in the past. So maybe I'm a little nostalgic, but that's not what I'm talking about. The past will continue to be there. But I don't need to stay here to have that. But I still don't know. I want a place to have my one-word posts and my book reviews and my real journal entries and my nonsense walls of text and whatever else suits me. I don't just come here out of habit. This place has worked for me, even if I'm now thinking that it no longer does. So where do I go from here? Do I ignore the shit I'm annoyed by and work around it? Do I pack up and leave for good? I could just as easily be using a Blogger or WordPress or something. I don't know. I feel a tug of war between my impulse to build something new and better and my six years of history. I started this damn project when I was still in high school! I didn't know where it was going back then and I still don't know where it's going.
Right now, I feel like I'll do whatever it takes to become a real chemist. That is my aspiration. But I still, in some way, want to be a writer. I've always wanted to be a writer, even when I've had nothing to write about. That is the motivation behind a lot of what I do. I really believe that writing something, anything, is better for me than not writing. That is often the primary consideration in what I do. I was seriously overjoyed at the couple of comments I received on my chemistry blog stating that what I'd posted had been helpful. No really, I was overjoyed. Moreso than might be considered sane by some standards. But I don't mind talking to ghosts. I find them to be company enough and look at most of this stuff as leisurely practice for my writing skills. But that's not my motivation with this entry. I really don't know what to do. It seems trivial in some sense. Writing here or writing somewhere else is still writing.But I still can't decide. The tug of war continues.
If you actually read all that, you must know me pretty well, otherwise you wouldn't have sat through it. So, what do you think?