Goodbye, LJ World
This past weekend there was an awful lot of hullabaloo about The Tenth Anniversary. So maybe my own little anniversary doesn't seem like such a big deal?
Sept 13th, 2001 was my very first LJ entry. I started right on the heels of The Sept 11th.
I could talk at length about what reading back through those old entries has meant, but honestly that's been a very internal process and my thoughts on it are probably no more interesting to any lingering readers than the original entries themselves were. I was 19 at the time, with all the normal thoughts of a 19 year old. I wondered about my body image, my future, my present. I was very selfish and very melodramatic.
Maybe much hasn't changed.
I've done a lot of really great things since then. Things that I don't think my 19 year old self could've imagined. I hope I can say the same thing in another 10 years.
Maybe if it'd managed to stay more current, I'd have hung on. At this time, though, LJ affords me a voice to people I already know instead of introducing me to new ones. That said, that very feature of relative anonymity is also something I'm going to miss. Just the other day I started to post to G+ about something that was on my mind, only to realize that I shouldn't. What if some day somebody digs up that I think terminating a pregnancy when the fetus is known to have Down Syndrome is a valid choice? Why would I risk my future career on a fleeting opinion? Wanting to know what others think just isn't reason enough.
LJ has been a valueable and meaningful part of my online life. I've enjoyed meeting new friends, such as averagesmartguy and bblue23, as well as keep track of old friends like such as dosboofand mandy_moon. Thing is, though, I've posted barely one entry a month for the last few years, and I check in maybe once a week. Several people I used to follow and interact with have already left. My friends list is chock full of “OMG my GPA is too low” posts from the speechpathology and JETJapan communities. Even those who do still post aren't getting my full attention because I'm so turned off by an interface that hasn't appreciably changed in the 10 years I've been using it. The truth is, LJ is a dying community.
I've thought about keeping up my yearly wrap-up posts, just for the same of nostalgia, but then again what is the sound of one user posting?
I hope something else comes along that will allow me to continue journaling in an accessible way while using an avatar. In the mean time, I'll just have to rely on social networking. If you haven't looked me up on G+ yet, you probably should.