Visit the kelpforest....

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I joined LJ because I was first a member of the long-defunct ChickClick.com, a bulletin board. It was owned by the same company as IGN.com, but apparently was one of their least active boards (although it always seemed plenty active to me!), so they decided to close it. I was pregnant with Avalon at the time, and was a participant in the pregnancy thread; I started to consider all the other women in that conversation my friends. I noticed that many of them had LiveJournal accounts in their signatures, so when ChickClick went away, I followed them here, and have been here ever since. I created my account in 2001, but I didn't actually start using it until the following January. I can't quite believe its been more than six years! I think all of you I added then are still on my list; angelsmum, jedi_bunny, newbadthing, vampgyrl, and vwsrmylife, thanks for enriching my friend's page all this time, and putting up with me on yours. And all of you who've added me or let me add you in the meantime, I'm truly grateful that you let me share your experiences as well.

I started actually using this journal, when I realized I was forgetting things - funny stories, things my kids did, people at work, my pets, issues - and wanted to be able to remember them. Just the other day, I was reading through some old entries and thinking "I don't remember writing this at all." Photos help, but they don't tell the entire story. Someone at work invited me to a scrapbooking party shortly before I started this; I never really took it up, but this is my way of doing it. It's also a good place to vent, but I hope I haven't been doing that too often. Another reason I started it was, since I am not always that good at keeping in touch with people, and I do better with letters than phone calls, that this would a sort of open letter to friends and family, so they could check to see what I'm up to. So far, that hasn't worked so well, but I do have people who tell me they look at it from time to time.

I've started things other places (blogger, deviantart, gather) but here is where I seem to spend the most time. LJ has done a few things over the years that piss me off, but I seem to have invested too much here; mostly the people and communities. Not that I'm a huge participator, but I haven't found anything quite like it anywhere else. Sure Gather pays me (after a fashion), but it's just not as nice a place to hang around; since stuff there seems to be more geared toward public consumption, it's just not quite as comfortable and I haven't gotten to know people as well.

Hmm, my subscription here has run out. Dammit, I love having my thirty icons, and I've had an account here going on six years, but I am having my doubts lately. Not only are there now ads here - I joined originally because of the promise there would never be ads - but it seems like every few months the staff gets turned on to some kind of witch hunt. First it was the breastfeeding icons, and lately the whole you-have-a-certain-few-key-words-in-your-interest-list-therefore-you-are-a-purveyor-of-child-porn hysteria has really made me mislike giving Six Apart anymore of my money. Granted they admitted they screwed up big time, and did their best to fix it and amend their TOS; however, it's just left a bad taste in my mouth.

I realize I'm making a statement about these things way after the fact.

I found Neil Gaiman's entry today, about his daughter Maddy, quite touching. Because that is exactly why I started this journal.

http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2006/12/replacing-something-that-doesnt-exist.html

"... in a few years Maddy will forget that she had ever existed in a flurry of self-referential notes, and I will forget as well. And sometimes this Blog is just a diary, or a reminder. You forget the things you were certain you would always remember, especially the tiny things, and all too often they're the things that matter."

(edit: ...and I'm tickled that I beat Will Wheaton to the punch in quoting this. XD )