An Anniversary, Ms. Havisham Style

[cbertsch]

Well, this journal has made it to another year. This is my sixth anniversary here. But it's also the most bittersweet, since many of the friends I looked forward to reading have abandoned the site and others only post infrequently. As a measure of how things have changed, I almost went back and changed that "here" in the second sentence to "there," since most of the comments I get these days come indirectly, via the "notes" I import from Live Journal into Facebook. Sigh. It depresses me, because there are many things about LJ that I still dig, despite its many problems, from the ease with which concentric circles of friendship -- intimate to casual -- can be managed to the comment threading that still makes Facebook's implementation seem ridiculously lame. And I say all that despite a pretty strong hunch that my life would have gone a lot better if I'd never taken the plunge into personal blogging. Anyway, here's the tally, for what it's worth: 3267 journal entries, 13,849 comments received and 11,350 comments posted. I wonder if I'll make it to 4000?

Comments

[e4q.livejournal.com]

i don't know whose blogs you do comment on, but i notice you never comment on mine. perhaps you find me boring? but that means you don't get to meet people in the threads, which is how i refresh my own flist. i started off in lj with two friends, neither of whom blog now, but as people have dropped away (and in one instance actively dumped!) i have picked up new people. either in the threads of friends or the one community i do read (buddhists) or because they follow me in the same way. if you want your lj to live i think you have to be more proactive. people will drop away, and other people get involved, just like real life!

[jstgerma.livejournal.com]

You know, it's funny, I used to read this on LJ a lot (not from the start, but probably going back four years now), but now that you post it on Facebook, for whatever reason I usually read it there. And I don't like commenting on Facebook stuff, because I'm too aware of the visibility of everything that gets said there.

It's interesting to hear you say the thing about personal blogging. I've never had nearly the complications you have, but I've often felt the same way, probably to a lesser degree.

[masoo.livejournal.com]

I still comment here! But you're right, FB does end up being the place where a lot of comments happen. I see it as expanding my readership, since far more people see me on Facebook than on my blog ... at least that's what I tell myself.

[elizabeg.livejournal.com]

My own blogiversary is coming up too. I haven't thought about it much, though--probably because it depresses me to think about how much my blog has shifted from an archive of experimental prose/poetry and a record of my efforts to get a handle on online interaction, audience, performance, etc--to... I don't even know. Mindless posts about the growth of my garden, recipes, and a locked archive of my efforts to stay afloat while writing my dissertation. It makes me sad that I've become so much less "interesting." I also comment less, and I know this. Less frequent posts and comments are partly due to the physical strain it puts me through now to sit at the computer any longer than I have to. But that can't be all.

I do hope you don't leave this place, though. For what it's worth, I can't get into the note function of Facebook AT ALL, or Facebook much at all either. And even if there's less back and forth here now for many of us, I still love meeting you here in this space, which feels more like a space of your own devising.

[pissang.livejournal.com]

I still read you every day. My LJ is kind of like Charliejournal b/c I never cultivated a large network of "friends" and the ones I do have don't write much anymore. Even though I don't comment much, I prefer reading you here than on Facebook due to the friendlier interface.

I am just going to assume I'm one of those people who you are upset about not posting anymore. If not, I should be. I actually still write a bit, but I find myself making my posts private when I'm done. I don't know why but my urge to share has dried up. Possibly, if I grew my readership, I'd have a greater desire to post. And possibly I outgrew the persona I began writing with and never bothered to develop a new one. Anyway, you're blog is still up there with espn.com as one of my favorite forms of productive procrastination.