Fond of rumpots, crackpots, and how are you, Mr. Wilson?

I got a notification yesterday, congratulating me on the 20th anniversary of my LiveJournal.

20th anniversary. Of my LiveJournal.

How in the holy crumbcake do I even begin processing that?

I mean, how many things have I ever done for 20 years? Granted, I'm on Dreamwidth now, but it's part of the continuum—scroll far enough back, and the imported posts will take you all the damn way to July 3, 2002, when my life was different enough to be unrecognizable now. That was back when you either needed a startup code from someone who already had an LJ or had to cough up for a paid account. I forked over the five bucks even though I knew no one on here, but wanted in because having your own Internet space still meant finding someone with space to spare. I remember who my first LJ friends were: my college friend Bryan, and kimberly_a, and a few folks from Larissa's Binghamton crowd. I remember the process of finding folks through shared interests and interesting comments on other peoples' blogs, and how quickly I became invested in their stories and their social circles became mine.

Every year or two, I write something up on one of my social mediases about how important LJ was to me and those close at hand (extremely); how different LJ culture is to any current stomping grounds (radically); how much I miss the presumptive Golden Age (desperately); how my wife, all of my past roommates, most of my relationships and how I conduct them, the area I call my home, my music, my writing, all have roots to one degree or another in this aging little corner of online life. And every bit of that is true, but somehow it's only now that I've started asking the question, "Was it LiveJournal, or was it us?"

My department at work recently hired on a couple of folks on the low end of twenty-something, born early enough that they wouldn't have even brushed sleeves with LJ on the way to their Tweetbooks and Snapagrams. Since I'd just started posting again, I tried to explain just what the big deal was, why it proved so transformative. It wasn't even like it was the only game in town back then—there were other blogging sites, and Myspace had been Scotchgarding everyone's retinas for a while. it took some doing to get to the heart of it: LJ made you work for it, while also making it worth it. Every social media platform has been about streamlining the social experience, because why write a paragraph when you can compress your engagement to a preselected icon? Steve Martin used to hand out cards to fans he ran into that read, "This certifies that you had a personal encounter with me and that you found me warm, polite, intelligent, and funny." It's what Zuckerberg et al have done, only cutting out the middleman.

The only times LJ streamlined anything was to change the interface to make it easier to read. They might streamline the experience, but not the engagement. We wrote long, thoughtful posts because we got long, thoughtful responses, which we'd then give to their long, thoughtful posts as well. If you want to express that you care, you had to say so, not paste a fucking "CARE" sticker to feign involvement. Do people who weren't the right age to participate know the depth of intimacy that creates? I spilled so many intimate details, joyous and painful and embarrassing and silly and trivial and monumental, in a way that startles me to think about now. Crises were followed and followed up on. Flirting flew across pages like moths. Sex was as easy to share as today's breakfast. Facebook users are brought together, it has nothing to do with Facebook; when the people of LiveJournal were brought together, it was absolutely because of LiveJournal. For all of the memetic currency that we eat and breathe today, could you even imagine something like Blogathon of Blog Like It's the End of the World happening now? And for everything given, more often than not it all got given back. Four paragraphs of shared grief and loneliness would receive a simple response of "I read the whole thing," and it meant more than a thousand like buttons, because it didn't come by accident. It couldn't.

Maybe it had more to do with who we all were back then than I'm admitting to myself, but I can't help but thing that it was the forum, that place-not-a-place, that made it possible for us to be those people at that time. Whenever I've returned to LJ/DW since the tide started turning, it's never stuck because I'm saddened by the lack of interaction, that it's not what it was. This time, I've come back because even in this one post, I've written more than I have in the last two months on Facebook, which I'm arguably more "active" in. It's not because it's safe, whatever that means, but because it's hard. Community is hard. Friendship is hard. Love is hard. Life is fucking hard. And after twenty years of doing this, I find myself needing a lot less of the easy.

For those of you who were there, who held some part of my life during that time no matter how small, I thank you. Still here, still writing. And I know this might not be your place any more, and that's fine. I've got my old pictures and stories and the music we shared, and a stupid icon of a medieval pig because in 2002 I didn't know what else to use. Feel free to stop by, any time.

I emphatically approve.



friending frenzy: active LJ friends!

Bear with me here. The respiratory blarghh that's making the rounds landed somewhere behind my sternum last week, and the cold medicine isn't helping with the putting of words together. (You would not believe how much editing I'm doing on this post right now.) I really wish I knew why my equilibrium gets so easily banjaxed by medication. For drugs with predictable drowsiness/head-loopiness reactions (Benadryl, NyQuil), I can only partake if I'm prepared to be completely useless for the entire next day. That doesn't much surprise me, but the only thing I took was a hit of Mucinex when the fire alarms randomly went off at 4 a.m. last night. Mucinex does list dizziness as a fine-print side effect, but it's wayyyy down in the "uncommon-to-rare" range, and here I am unable to comfortably stand up all day without bumping into door frame. Fun, except when it's not.

rain_herself is off visiting her sister in Portland while I'm trying to maintain oxygen intake (although she's dealing with her own illness out there, poor girl), and since I'm at leisure and wanting to connect with people I thought I'd do one of the LJ posts I keep insisting I'm going to do eventually—the adventures of Murder Ballads, events over the holidays, future plans, Arisia, the flaming nightmare my job has recently turned into, a few random exciting bits, and so on. But focus is at a premium, and these are longer-form items, i.e. longer than my attention span. So I'll just say that I finally have a fully-functional computer at long last and I really want some Chipotle right now but have NO desire to force my flesh into pants and down the elevator to fetch it, and we'll get to the bigger stuff later and call it a night. Deal?

I haven't been posting. Not here, not anywhere.

That's not completely true—the Indiegogo campaign for Murder Ballads sent me into huckster mode for two solid months back there—but it's true enough: I haven't been reaching out. I won't go into the usual list of reasons, because they're many and complicated, but I mention it because it has left me in a bind. The bind comes in two parts.

1) I miss people. rain_herself and I have gotten closer than ever in so many ways, but I've lost touch with friends, local and otherwise. I'm not used to that.

2) My connection to people, at least for the last decade-plus, has been largely through social media. I don't think I can do social media any more.

They hurt, these places where the people I've long loved hang around. So often, just a peek at Twitter or Facebook (especially Facebook) is enough to fill me with anger, the horrible kind that doesn't shake off, or sorrow, or hopelessness. They are the single most emotionally damaging thing in my life now, even more than job stress, or fears about the future and money, or even the too-long I-90 commute each weekday. And I'd walk away for good, or at least prune out the parts that are wearing at my brain and soul, but, well, it's where the people I've been closest to are. I don't see them in my daily life, so I have to go find them where they're gathering, in these imaginary buildings.

And these buildings aren't safe.

So how does this work? LJ is marginally safer if only because I've been around long enough to know where the dark basements are and how to reach the nearest exit. That leaves me feeling comfortable enough to ask the question here, but maybe not confident enough to stick around for the answer: how do I ditch this online world? Or if I stay here (where "here" is LJ/FB/Twitter/Tumblr/Ello/the Next Big Thing du jour), how to I keep it from breaking me? How do I find the people again without having to stare down the awfulness day after day? We all used to do that, right?

Keeeranky, it's been a while since I've been so bored that I've reduced myself to serial-refreshing my LiveJournal friends list. I have mixed feelings about this. One the one hand, it's nice that there's enough LJ activity to merit a few rounds of F5 Whack-a-Mole; on the other, I feel it necessary to defend myself, explaining that if I don't, I'll be in danger of using Facebook so much it might accidentally look like I'm enjoying it.

25 minutes to go on my shift. Mrff.

* I've finally reinstated my paid LJ account. I'd had a paid account since day 1 back in 2003, when you had to bankroll your way in unless you knew someone, which I didn't. I mainly exploit the polls feature, but it's nice to have the icons back.

* Hung out with the kidlings and the grandkidling for the second weekend in a row. Had a good time. Almost caught up on sleep by now. And the body the cops fished out of the pond three blocks from the kids' house was completely unrelated, as far as I know.

* Finally have Massachusetts plates! One more yoga-proof stress-wad released from my upper spine.

* I shill because I love: Murder Ballads concert this Saturday at Professor Java's at 217 Wolf Road in Albany, starting at 7 p.m.! Music! Coffee! cluegirl dressed in something smashing! Me dressed in something else! All the details here!

Seriously, do come if you can. Even if you've caught one of our previous shows, we have a snotload of new material in the wings that we're dying to lay on y'all. After this gig, we're going to be pouring our focus into frickin' finishing the frickin' album frickin' already, so by the time we make it onto a stage again it'll be with merch in hand. Stay tuned.

* Right, time to clock out. Be well, all.

I mentioned pondering participating in jdbracknell's 100 Things Blogging Challenge. As a geekiness-impaired media-fed list whore, there wasn't much chance that I wouldn't be participating, but there was some question as to what the focus would be. After much backbrain processing, it occurred to me that although I've done movie lists over and over again, I haven't broken it down any finer than that. So if you'll pardon the pause for fanfare you'll have to imagine for yourself:

100 Scenes: Adam's Highly Idiosyncratic List of Whatever Favorite Movie Scenes of His He Feels Like Analyzing Unto Death

I was going to elaborate, but really, it's what it says on the tin: a description of a notable scene from the ever-expanding history of cinema, a YouTube link to said scene, and some indication of why it's one of my lifelong favorite moments. As life gets ever more bonkers posting might become sporadic, but honestly any posting at this point would be more than I'm currently doing (and really, people, just try stopping me from jazz-handing my inner pedantic film snob).

The ostensible fun begins tomorrow. Watch this space.





{Take the 100 Things challenge!}

Over breakfast and Internet:

figmentj: Facebook and Google+ have ruined me. I get upset when I can't "like" things people are doing on other sites.
Me: I know what you mean. It's a handy tool.
figmentj: Yeah.
Me: [musing] It's kind of like going around with a stack of Post-It Notes with smiley faces on them, going, "I like yoouuu... [splat] and yoouuu..."
figmentj: [giggles] We should totally do that...
figmentj and Me: [in unison, suddenly looking at each other] OH MY GOD!

So we know what we're doing for Arisia next year, anyway.

If you're (a) reading this and (b) a music fan, then I would like to call your immediate attention to wechoose40, a community created by belgatherial based on a popular New Zealand television program(me). The idea is that every week, a new theme is chosen, ranging from Solo Female Artists to Dogs to Air, and community members nominate and subsequently vote on songs that fit that category, culminating in a more-or-less live countdown of the chosen top 40. I bring this to your attention for three reasons:
1) It's a great deal of fun.
2) The more people they have voting each week, the fewer tiebreakers they need to get a solid countdown, which the proprietors would be ever so grateful for.
3) The purely mercenary one: I'll be doing the first ever guest list, starting tonight at 9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. (My topic: a Literal Top 40. Details available at the community.)

Thank you. You may go about your day.

EDIT: It is unleashed.