Livejournal has been a part of my life since March of 2001
but my life has changed a lot since then.
I've been doing some reevaluating, lately, and I've been slowly accumulating a list of reasons as to why LiveJournal as I use it doesn't fit into my life.
This isn't a comment on the community at large--just how I fit into it.
Friends: Most of the people on my friends list are people who I have either been friends with in the past or don't really talk to in reality. The rest are people I've never met in the real world. LJ is this regard is like a huge list of those Christmas letters people send every year that update everyone they know on where their lives have taken them since the last Christmas letter. That's a really cool thing, however, I've been realizing that my friends list gives me a false sense of who my friends really are, and it's delaying the inevitable. My life has been turned upside down in the past year, and eventually many of the friends I've been close to will begin to drift away because of my getting married and moving to Nashua. It's just the way it goes. I've wondered who I would stay in contact with, if I suddenly didn't have a journal. I'm scared to think of how many people I won't hear from anymore, how few friends I'd really be left with, but I'd rather go off and find a real community than keep deceiving myself with relationships that are either in atrophy or on hold. LiveJournal gives me a false sense of my relational reality.
Temptation: LiveJournal is a temptation for me with several of the vices I struggle with. Pride. Every once in a while I'll make a post that gets accolades, and that approval is a real high to me. It starts to get addicting, and it makes me hunger for peoples' approval. In English: I am a comment whore. Sloth. I have the tendency to sit in front of the computer and refresh my friends list every five seconds when I have an assignment or should be doing work. Sloth leads to gossip and contention and, as engagedlfe has so beautifully illustrated this weekend and dramafreedebate draws out on a regular basis, wrath. I have an overinflated sense of justice, and I need to learn to keep my nose where it doesn't belong and realize that I live in a fallen world.
Community: I don't know where to begin on communities right now. Leander was commenting over supper that as soon as LJ did away with the codes, communities have turned into the grey town (see The Great Divorce). People who can get everything they want by just thinking about it, don't really care if they have real goods. People who can have a friend at the click of a button don't really care about having real friends. People who can create a new community every time they don't like the rules never find real community. engagedlife, dramafreedebate, and realcollege have each taken their turn sucking away my energy into petty cat fights over absolutely nothing, and that doesn't even begin on the communities that I don't mod. That needs to come to a screeching halt. I have enough drama in my own life. I'm planning a wedding for crying out loud.
For those of you who like the bottom line, here it is.
I'm fasting from callmehero for Lent. I will still update farmboyandhero (wedding planning), kristysrecipes, and kennenvelt (papers and creative writing) until I find another forum (more on that in a sec), but I won't be checking my friends list or adding friends (though anyone is welcome to friend those journals), and I will be officially resigning from my post on engagedlife, dramafreedebate, realcollege, and researchers on Ash Wednesday.
The resignations will be permanent, and I think that my involvement with LiveJournal will be permanently gone as well, but I'm contemplating either showing up on a non-community based blog elsewhere or on a website (no angelfire, I promise). When this happens, I will make a final post here.
I want to keep in touch with everybody, even those of you who are "just" LJ friends. E-mail me at kriccitelliATspeakeasyDOTnet, and I'll gladly give out my AIM name and/or number. I have more time to hang out than my appearance on LiveJournal makes it appear. Before I sound any more pathetic, I'm going to stop writing.
I've been doing some reevaluating, lately, and I've been slowly accumulating a list of reasons as to why LiveJournal as I use it doesn't fit into my life.
This isn't a comment on the community at large--just how I fit into it.
Friends: Most of the people on my friends list are people who I have either been friends with in the past or don't really talk to in reality. The rest are people I've never met in the real world. LJ is this regard is like a huge list of those Christmas letters people send every year that update everyone they know on where their lives have taken them since the last Christmas letter. That's a really cool thing, however, I've been realizing that my friends list gives me a false sense of who my friends really are, and it's delaying the inevitable. My life has been turned upside down in the past year, and eventually many of the friends I've been close to will begin to drift away because of my getting married and moving to Nashua. It's just the way it goes. I've wondered who I would stay in contact with, if I suddenly didn't have a journal. I'm scared to think of how many people I won't hear from anymore, how few friends I'd really be left with, but I'd rather go off and find a real community than keep deceiving myself with relationships that are either in atrophy or on hold. LiveJournal gives me a false sense of my relational reality.
Temptation: LiveJournal is a temptation for me with several of the vices I struggle with. Pride. Every once in a while I'll make a post that gets accolades, and that approval is a real high to me. It starts to get addicting, and it makes me hunger for peoples' approval. In English: I am a comment whore. Sloth. I have the tendency to sit in front of the computer and refresh my friends list every five seconds when I have an assignment or should be doing work. Sloth leads to gossip and contention and, as engagedlfe has so beautifully illustrated this weekend and dramafreedebate draws out on a regular basis, wrath. I have an overinflated sense of justice, and I need to learn to keep my nose where it doesn't belong and realize that I live in a fallen world.
Community: I don't know where to begin on communities right now. Leander was commenting over supper that as soon as LJ did away with the codes, communities have turned into the grey town (see The Great Divorce). People who can get everything they want by just thinking about it, don't really care if they have real goods. People who can have a friend at the click of a button don't really care about having real friends. People who can create a new community every time they don't like the rules never find real community. engagedlife, dramafreedebate, and realcollege have each taken their turn sucking away my energy into petty cat fights over absolutely nothing, and that doesn't even begin on the communities that I don't mod. That needs to come to a screeching halt. I have enough drama in my own life. I'm planning a wedding for crying out loud.
For those of you who like the bottom line, here it is.
I'm fasting from callmehero for Lent. I will still update farmboyandhero (wedding planning), kristysrecipes, and kennenvelt (papers and creative writing) until I find another forum (more on that in a sec), but I won't be checking my friends list or adding friends (though anyone is welcome to friend those journals), and I will be officially resigning from my post on engagedlife, dramafreedebate, realcollege, and researchers on Ash Wednesday.
The resignations will be permanent, and I think that my involvement with LiveJournal will be permanently gone as well, but I'm contemplating either showing up on a non-community based blog elsewhere or on a website (no angelfire, I promise). When this happens, I will make a final post here.
I want to keep in touch with everybody, even those of you who are "just" LJ friends. E-mail me at kriccitelliATspeakeasyDOTnet, and I'll gladly give out my AIM name and/or number. I have more time to hang out than my appearance on LiveJournal makes it appear. Before I sound any more pathetic, I'm going to stop writing.