permanent chrysalis

[beesknees]

It’s odd being back on DW. Retro. Never really got a foothold here; not through any fault of DW, but because my real-life/LJ friends had already shifted to FB as LJ declined and I wasn’t in a good zone to reach out and make new friends here. My extended family infested FB and had found my first and then second LJ blog (shakes fist at that one cousin, unwisely trusted); privacy was my priority, even if that meant I stopped connecting with anyone new, being findable to anyone who’d want to reconnect.

Don’t really remember my set-up here. It’s still very, eh, 2002? Whenever I started off with deadjournal in my goth days, before I even had an invite to LJ. Before tags had any use beyond your own categorisation, certainly not for others to search through, and thus were individualised, silly, and opaque to the point of meaningless outside your little circle. Sure, I could organise them en masse, change them to something sensible, but this is also kind of a museum of my brain’s shape in 2006.

And my icons are moody! The 2000s were so grimdark! And I, eh, not sure how to express the little box I was crammed in that I couldn’t present myself as functional and even consistently cheerful. Anyway, they don’t represent the giant goofball weirdo I am most of the time now.

And yup, I miss “likes”. Got low spoons, massive commenting anxiety…I’m reading, y’all! I assume you are too. Still miss the little ticks of solidarity, giving and getting.

None of this is meant to put down DW. I’m glad it’s here. It’s a nice space. Just weird that blogging and its digital-life descendants have existed so long that getting even this close to my roots in it feels alien.

Comments

[speccygeekgrrl42]

my real-people-finding-my-LJ horror story was going to grab something from my friend/crush in his dorm room and catching sight of my own journal, where I had extensively agonized over my love for him and lack of love for my current partner, on his laptop screen.

However, he did apologize for invading my privacy like a week later (!!) and I did get to date him even after he saw what a mess I was on the inside, so it worked out, after a while and for a while.

[kara_mckay]

I tried DW very briefly after deleting my LJ in the wake of strikethrough, but at that time, DW felt very much like acafan space. Maybe it was just the corner I blundered into, but it felt like you needed to have something intellectual to say to post here, and while I did used to write meta and fandom observations back then, that sort of writing has never made up the bulk of my journaling. I drifted onto FB, which I hated with a passion, and didn't try DW again until trying out Tumblr in 2017. My experience of Tumblr is that it's a toxic garbage fire, and falling into DW from there felt a whole lot better than anyplace I'd been since LJ. That said, I'd been away long enough to get used to the like button, and I simply cannot adjust again to using a site that won't let me know whether anyone is reading my posts.

[kuroiyousei]

♥

[b0batea]

I miss likes too :( But trying to engage via commenting more, now. x