My Public Journal
Being weary of all the comments that have reached my ears (or rather, since it was via text, eyes) that Livejournal is for nothing but "memes, bitching, complaining, and drama," I've gone through and given the public face of my journal a good scrubbing, although I'm still not happy with my tagging.
The fact is, while I still fully believe in the usefulness of LJ as a tool for venting one's personal frustrations (similar to the various vent-forums of many of the bboards I've been on), I see no particular reason to subject the casual observer to me at my worst. Consequently, the majority of my posts that are structured around memes, complaining, ranting, bitching and moaning have been placed either under friends-only locks or private locks. Pure venom posts whose purposes as an outlet of anger has been served are now private-locked, while milder rambling complaints or just posts of a more personal nature have gone under friends locks. In the future, posts of these natures will receive friends locks when they originally go up, and the worst of the venom-vents will be switched to private lock soon after.
I'm not ashamed of the fact that I'm a human being with the usual array of human failings, but, while I look to my friends as a support network, I don't see any reason to subject any random strangers who might be browsing for pictures of giant robots or what-have-you to me at my worst.
Now, as for what stays public, most of them fall into a number of broad categories:
For the most part, a complete stranger should feel comfortable browsing my journal* without having to worry about running into any unpleasant angst or boring quizzes**, with the exception of a few of my earlier posts which contain both private and public matter that I decided to leave public. Anyone who wants to be removed from my friends list so they don't have to deal with the less pleasant side of me are free to request it. I won't be offended. Meanwhile, if anyone wants to be added... well, I'd like to know who you are, first. I don't use my own friend's list to watch journals; I use the message center. I only put people on my friends list (anymore) because I want them to have the ability to view my locked content.
* Not that they have any reason to know me from Eve, outside of the belly button business.
** Just boring non-quizzes.
The fact is, while I still fully believe in the usefulness of LJ as a tool for venting one's personal frustrations (similar to the various vent-forums of many of the bboards I've been on), I see no particular reason to subject the casual observer to me at my worst. Consequently, the majority of my posts that are structured around memes, complaining, ranting, bitching and moaning have been placed either under friends-only locks or private locks. Pure venom posts whose purposes as an outlet of anger has been served are now private-locked, while milder rambling complaints or just posts of a more personal nature have gone under friends locks. In the future, posts of these natures will receive friends locks when they originally go up, and the worst of the venom-vents will be switched to private lock soon after.
I'm not ashamed of the fact that I'm a human being with the usual array of human failings, but, while I look to my friends as a support network, I don't see any reason to subject any random strangers who might be browsing for pictures of giant robots or what-have-you to me at my worst.
Now, as for what stays public, most of them fall into a number of broad categories:
- Personal creative efforts, such as my writing and my art, both original and fan works. I also even count things like my filled out RPG applications here. Memes that result in creative output, such as writing memes, stay public even as the rest get locked.
- Reviews, which I personally define as "posts in which I give my thoughts on the creative efforts of others, no matter how short or inane." I mostly talk about comic books, but I'll sometimes cover movies, other types of books, cartoons, or whatever else catches my fancy. Having a single frame scanned in from a single comic book with a quick reaction on my part is sometimes enough to land in this category.
- Random Thoughts. These are usually just brief, random or semi-random observations that occur to me in the course of living my life. Chat room conversations that I found amusing enough to share also probably qualify under this category.
- Sea stories. Please note that not all of these have to do with the sea, or even my time in the Navy. Any story of my life that I feel has the same general feel once its written down gets this tag, and I'm often just fine with suddenly telling a story that happened to me years ago, because I just enjoy telling stories. Please note that while the generals of a sea story are always true, occasionally the specifics are... tweaked a bit to make for better story telling. This doesn't happen often, but it does happen, and no, I'm not going to tell you which ones I do it in, and which ones I don't.
- Quasi-Essays. Often, similar to Random Thoughts but more expanded. These are a step up from rant and complaining posts because for one thing, I'm often not angry when I write them down, but also because I've taken the time to lay my thoughts out in a coherent and, I believe, interesting manner. I, of course, find myself to be an exceedingly fascinating person, and I just assume other people find me the same way.
- Webpage pimpping, news snippets, and other things like that. That is, link posts.
- Dreams. Some people consider dreams boring, but considering mine include things like Long Haul, Super-Ninja, well... they entertain me, so I assume they'd entertain other people.
- Chat room excerpts, usually with fandom related content, that cracked me up enough that I felt they should be shared with the world.
For the most part, a complete stranger should feel comfortable browsing my journal* without having to worry about running into any unpleasant angst or boring quizzes**, with the exception of a few of my earlier posts which contain both private and public matter that I decided to leave public. Anyone who wants to be removed from my friends list so they don't have to deal with the less pleasant side of me are free to request it. I won't be offended. Meanwhile, if anyone wants to be added... well, I'd like to know who you are, first. I don't use my own friend's list to watch journals; I use the message center. I only put people on my friends list (anymore) because I want them to have the ability to view my locked content.
* Not that they have any reason to know me from Eve, outside of the belly button business.
** Just boring non-quizzes.