So we're moving in, then? Cue vulnerability, hopes, dreams, and music.
mechante_fille made a post to start us off on this LiveJournal-DreamWidth-switchover adventure, and I'm all about solidarity and creating strength in numbers...so. Hi. I'm newtypeshadow, and it's time to get used to making journal posts again.
There's so much I need to modify about this journal to make it home, but I'll save that for later.
What I really want to say is I hope this works.
Carpal tunnel, depression, and a full-time job banished me from computer use around the time LJ was beginning to fall to the Russians (cue explosions and exoduses and waffling between fledgling DW and LJ's sporadic mass evacuations), and by the time I got my symptoms under control years later, and had time enough to have an internet life again, most of my friends had moved onto other platforms that didn't feel as safe (read: cannot be locked) or communal, and I felt like I'd both abandoned them without explanation, and been abandoned by them in turn.
I still feel isolated and alone, compared to how connected I used to be with everyone. Some of those years-long friendships are just...gone. They've moved on. If it's even possible to rebuild, I don't know how. That's why I'm here.
Posting to LJ let me have friendship-community and writing-community in ways I've struggled and failed to duplicate in other mediums. For example, I had an LJ fic journal (newtypeshadow46) where I posted all the stories and essays and poems and songs I wrote soon after I wrote them. It was a writing archive of rough drafts and revisions, and friends would read and comment encouragement along the way. While I write stories because it makes me happy, I'm more inclined to write stories if I know friends are waiting for them-friends who want to read more and are happy to say so.
After LJ, my writing productivity took a nosedive. It's improved some now that I can type again, but it's still nowhere near what it was.
My hope for this journal, and the small community of friends who've decided to make a real attempt to move here, make a home here, re-create a community here, is that I gain back a writing community of friends who are excited to write and share and comment and enthuse about and be inspired by the genres we all love, and the people who are posting.
My hope for this entry is that I'm not alone in wanting those things, and I won't be alone here on DreamWidth.
Anyone out there?