A new year and a look back: 12 months on LiveJournal.

[bironic]

Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of my first post. Tonight heralds the start of autumn and the commencement of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year. (A very happy New Year to those who are observing.) Altogether a good time for a little recap. There was going to be a bunch of ficlets to celebrate, but they're not done yet, so it'll just be this navel-gazing for now.

This year on LJ, I:

• Learned how to craft posts that weren't bloated with two or three posts' worth of information. (This one is my favorite cringe-worthy example.)
• Discovered the joy of giving and receiving feedback.
• Fell hard into House fandom and became part of an online community for the first time instead of watching from the outskirts or participating mainly in conferences/conventions.
• Posted five pieces of fanfiction in two fandoms, totalling 19,700 words (with another 4,000 of Spike story and 1,400 of ficlets on my computer getting worked on). Have been thrilled to see several of them Memory'd and included on people's fic rec lists.
• Held a month-long Memoryfest (friends-locked).
• Hosted a birthday talk-about-your-usernames festival. (Still open! Drop in if you haven't yet.)
• Befriended people I've never met and didn't have plans to meet.
• From an initial list of six or seven friends, became "friend of" 56 people/communities (!), 54 of which are legitimate and 20 of whom I know in real life. Also known as the discovery of the golden rule, Create and Ye Shall Be Friended.
• Wrote 176 posts, including reviews for 26+ movies, two plays, half a dozen ballets, nine books, and a lot of episodes of House. May I take a moment to apologize again to all the Harry Potter people who've put up with that last?
• Found out exactly how much LiveJournal eats one's life.

Top Commenters on bironic's LiveJournal

1	kabale	140
2	catilinarian	130
3	daasgrrl	66
4	maddy_harrigan	56
5	michelle_nine	42
6	synn	37
7	firestorm717	31
8	musicisbelievng	21
9	captain_tulip	20
10	thewlisian_afer	19

11	usomitai	18
12	secondsilk	17
13	pynelyf	15
14	thirdblindmouse	14
15	crazypalefreak	11
16	mateo10	10
17	bethctg	8
18	elynross	7
19	pun	6
20	gingergirl1977	6
21	lysa1	6
22	simple__man	5
23	fallen_arazil	5
24	alisel_kat	5
25	elanor_isolda	5
26	renoir_girl	4
27	mistressofmagik	4
28	leaper182	4
29	ryokophoenix	4
30	swatkat24	4
31	descrime	4
32	hawkeyecat	4
33	krippity	3
34	nakannalee	3
35	shoedog	3
36	wildelamassu	3
37	a_to_zita	3
38	chiana606	3
39	imsanehonest	3
40	m_butterfly	2
41	stephantom	2
42	rubberbutton	2
43	evila_elf	2
44	bitter_crimson	2
45	annephoenix	2
46	tathren	2
47	chicating	2
48	topaz_eyes	2
49	amazonqueenkate	2
50	qween_tartii	2
51	jakob_sinister	2
52	supersaps	2

Total Commenters: 102 (47 not shown)
Total Comments: 1,477
Report generated 9/22/2006 10:02:44 PM by scrapdog's LJ Comment Stats Wizard 1.7

(I've excised all the one-comment-ers. It's too bad this doesn't take into account comments on my posts in other communities.) Not surprising that six of the top ten are people I know personally, including a sister and some very good friends. kabale still holds the top spot after enthusiastic participation in the Memoryfest. daasgrrl, my goodness, you've shot up quickly. thewlisian_afer, I like how we hold parallel spots in each other's graphs.

Next year on LJ, I hope to:

• Hold another Memoryfest for all and sundry, probably in January.
• Meet some of you lovelies who live within driving distance, and perhaps some who don't.
• Improve my commenting skills so I can say in one paragraph what it now takes four to cover.
• Write more.

And in that vein, it's time to work on those ficlets.

In the meantime, TELL ME on this day of reflection: How has LiveJournal affected your life? (How) have you changed your posting style since starting? Did you make promises to yourself that you've kept or broken? Etc. Fellow LJ addict wants to know.

Comments

[nightdog-barks.livejournal.com]

L'shanah tovah, bironic.

How has LiveJournal affected your life?

I think in two main ways -- I've gotten to know people I never would've met in RL -- folks in the UK, in France, Australia, Canada (lots of Canadians, for some reason!), Singapore, Switzerland ... the list goes on and on. And they're all "real people", even though I've never met them and I'm not likely to EVER meet them. I know more about some of these people than I know about my own relatives. Whether this is a good thing or bad remains to be seen.

Also. I've learned I can write. And apparently it's not too bad (I say it this way because I have a permanent inferiority complex ingrained in my personality). I still have trouble believing that I can make stuff up, write it down, and complete strangers like it enough to leave comments on it. That's just ... amazing to me. I am perplexed and have trouble believing it all just won't suddenly go away.

(How) have you changed your posting style since starting?

I think lately my personal posts have become shorter because I've been writing more.

Did you make promises to yourself that you've kept or broken?

Not that I know of.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Thank you, and to you and your husband as well. May you have a sweet and healthy year filled with joy and lots of good fic (if that's not redundant).

I've gotten to know people I never would've met in RL ... And they're all "real people", even though I've never met them and I'm not likely to EVER meet them.

Oh, yes. I've definitely experienced a similar thing, though not because of LiveJournal, but rather because of fandom in general. After reading fanfic and lurking for several years, I started actively participating through the conference/convention scene, which often involved chatting with people online months before we met in person. To get into detail would entail a huge post, but suffice it to say that I've made some very cool friends through fandom who live all over the place too, and that's given me the excuse to travel to places like London and Copenhagen (this summer) to visit them. That positive experience does make me want to try to meet some LJ friends at some point in the future, no matter how far away they may live.

Also. I've learned I can write. And apparently it's not too bad ... I still have trouble believing that I can make stuff up, write it down, and complete strangers like it enough to leave comments on it.

See, that's cool. I've thought of myself as a writer since maybe the age of nine, took all the English electives in high school and then went and got two writing-related degrees and now work partly as a writer, so it's always fascinating to me to hear stories about how people -- not kids, that's a different story -- found this hidden talent through fanfic. And feedback can be a wonderful confidence-booster that affects you outside of LJ, don't you think? Even if that ingrained insecurity whispers reasons why you shouldn't take all praise at face value.

What I've found most amazing about the LJ/fanfic scene is, for the first time in my life, being able to write and share the sort of stories the majority of my acquaintances balked at when I wrote them while I was growing up, including the very idea of fanfiction, which they didn't understand, not to mention explicit and/or "twisted" stories, which I now know are NC-17/Mature and non-con and hurt/comfort, etc. Here nobody blinks at it. Other people write and share it. We comment about each other's work with respect. It's like heaven.

I think lately my personal posts have become shorter because I've been writing more.

My personal posts have definitely decreased in frequency since joining House fandom, or rather since people started friending me for my fannish stuff. Which is fine; I started this blog for that sort of thing, not for taking the place of my own paper journal.

Thank you for commenting! And, jeez, for reading all this.

[daasgrrl.livejournal.com]

Eep, do I talk that much? And of course, I have to post another comment in order to ask :)

LJ eats a lot of time - I tend to be a bit all-or-nothing so I sometimes feel like I 'have' to keep up with it more than I want to. But on the other hand, it's a fascinating little world unto itself.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

No, no, it's a good thing. :)

Hoo boy, is LJ a time-eater, especially when the obsessive-compulsive part of my personality insists that I must know about every House episode review out there or every House/Wilson story posted. The fandom is small enough to make that sort of crazy goal theoretically possible (as opposed to Harry Potter, which was my primary fandom before this), which doesn't help.

[fallen-arazil.livejournal.com]

Yay! I made it on the list! ... only five though? I can do better, I promise!

Seriously, it's almost pathetic how much I feel like livejournal has enriched my life. Since I jumped into the House fandom with both feet in May, my f-list has gone from three ppl I know IRL to 24 ppl, 17 of them from House fandom, and all of them brilliant. I live in the suburbs in a teeny-tiny state, and there simply isn't enough ppl around here interested in the same things I'm interested in for me to fangirl with!

THe only way I might have changed my posting style is, since I got involved in fanfic, I'm a little less likely to post personal entries. I'm always thinking 'people friend my to read my fanfic, not to hear about my personal shit' =P

Woo-whoo! Liveljoural! *cheers*

~Djinn

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Seriously, it's almost pathetic how much I feel like livejournal has enriched my life. Since I jumped into the House fandom with both feet in May, my f-list has gone from three ppl I know IRL to 24 ppl, 17 of them from House fandom, and all of them brilliant.

If you're pathetic, you're in excellent company. I'd say I've made about a dozen good online House-discussing friends since joining fandom in... April, I think, who are indeed brilliant (well, I wouldn't have it any other way :) ) and excellent writers and debaters and oh God how wonderful is it to have people to talk to about fannish stuff?

And I definitely identify with the drop in personal posts after getting friended by fannish people. This journal is about what I want to post and not what I think people want to hear (or, rather, a combination of both, but should be mostly the former), but yeah, that's what happened.

*cracks knuckles and goes after comment #5*

[renoir-girl.livejournal.com]

How has LiveJournal affected your life? (How) have you changed your posting style since starting? Did you make promises to yourself that you've kept or broken?

LJ has had a huge impact. I started on LJ very briefly in the fall of 2002, but then took it up seriously in December of 2003. With thanks to the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King fandom, I got to know a bunch of great people and a couple of real asses, with of course an expected amount who fell between. One of them became one of the best friends I've ever had. I've also now got a gardening mentor who has inspired me to do so much more outside the house and away from the computer than I think I'd have ever done without her. So, yeah, people are the important part.

As for my posting style? Well, for awhile I tried to post like the people who turned out to be asses. I was posting something like ten times a day. Posted a lot of memes. Used LJ instead of e-mail to communicate with individuals. Now it's a lot more of a cross between a personal record and a way of sharing my questioning and explorations with people I trust.

I've never made promises to myself where LJ was concerned, although when I got trampled by one of the asses, it took me awhile to trust people again. Now I don't trust as quickly or expect much, but I've figured out a lot better how to deal with that 'getting to know you' time.

I used to think of myself as an LJ addict, but now it's just part of life. My friends are here. Some friends have wandered off, but I'm glad that I'm getting to know more. It's really very much like life anywhere else, though I find it's easier for me to just go ahead and "talk" here... chances seem better that I'll find someone who knows what I'm talking about. If I go to the Professional and Academic Women's Conference, I'm afraid they'll just talk about their careers or their kids or whatnot, and I doubt one person would have any idea what I was talking about if I mentioned that I watch House... So, yeah, I'm a bit more comfortable here.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

And to you too, Mrs. Married Woman! Though you have wed an infidel, or whatever they're calling them these days.

[synn.livejournal.com]

I would love to see my own comment stats, but can't get it to show up formatted...
Being #6 is disappointing, but not really unexpected. Which leads into my thoughts on lj, and posting.
Here's some basic facts:
Joined: 2001-06-07 06:59:44 (I was working for the summer at the career development center -- long days w/ little to do, in an area rather far from all of my friends, with few people around in general. If I hadn't joined lj. I might have gone crazy.) Eilonwy was my first friend : )

Journal entries: 736 (divides to 147 or so a year, which surprised me.) I started by posting on a regular basis, b/c as mentioned, I would have gone crazy otherwise. Slowly, I realized I didn't really have anything to say. You know this, but my posting is based on my mood. When I'm happy I tend to post short tidbits about what's going on or things I find funny. When I'm stressed or angry I vent about it. When I'm depressed I tend to not post. usually. What's changed... well, several people friended me after 1:1, which is great, but since I figure they're probably interested in fandom or my fic, and not aimless ramblings about my rather dull life, I've started locking any non-fandom posts. That's about it.
I've tried reviews, and I've tried meta, but I'm really not good at either of those, and I can't ever seem to get through the post b4 deleting it.

Comments:
Posted: 935 - Received: 1,032

I'm terrible at responding to comments, so these numbers surprised me too. I expected a much greater discrepancy. um.
Comments are like akward social situations for me... you know when you hold a door for a stranger and they say 'no, you first' and it goes back and forth and no-one knows how to take it? it's like that. I never know when the comment conversation should end, and always feel as if I'm just rambling on to someone who's sitting at the other side thinking 'omg, do I have to answer this girl?'
And others I just don't have anything to say. For instance, I wanted to participate in every day of your memoryfest, but couldn't think of anything for most of the days, partially b/c I just didn't like most of the stuff I remembered, and partially b/c I have a terrible memory.

I don't know how many stories I've posted... somewhere between two and 6 or so, and three drabbles. Lately I've been trying to comment a bit more, but that's still really difficult. I've also been trying to write more. I'm working on a longer story, but am attempting to do drabbles in between just as little one-scene practice shots that make me feel like at least I've done something.
what else... I don't make promises to myself anymore, b/c I never keep them.
Have I gone on long enough?

[bironic.livejournal.com]

NEVER!

Sounds like you were having a Charlie Brown kind of day when you wrote this. :( <-- sad face to indicate my feelings when you sound like Charlie Brown

I always admired your restraint in posting and your ability to not let LJ suck up your life totally. Fanfic maybe, but LJ not so much.

I never know when the comment conversation should end, and always feel as if I'm just rambling on to someone who's sitting at the other side thinking 'omg, do I have to answer this girl?'

I uh, *laughs* I'm still trying to figure out the etiquette for that sort of thing. Most of the time I end up keeping the other person's last comment in my inbox, meaning to reply with something pithy, and then it gets buried with a new batch of comments and I find it like three months later and feel stupid replying so late and just delete it. Which may or may not come across as rude. When is a polite time to end a conversation? I mean, one of the two parties is going to have a comment hanging there, un-responded-to.

I wanted to participate in every day of your memoryfest, but couldn't think of anything for most of the days, partially b/c I just didn't like most of the stuff I remembered, and partially b/c I have a terrible memory.

I wish you had participated more too. I loved what you did share. You'll have to start storing up memories now for January.

[synn.livejournal.com]

Charlie brown day... that's great. True too.
If I let LJ suck up my days, I wouldn't have any time for fanfic.
I always admired your ability to write good reviews, and posts w/, you know, content. You actually use LJ to connect w/ people, which I don't really do.

I do the same thing w/ a lot of my comments... leave them in the inbox for far too long. like email.
If there is a polite time to end the conversation I can't figure it out... looking at other comment conversations doesn't provide the answer... someone should write a little LJ etiquette thing... 'thou shalt not continue a comment conversation beyond three responses'

Memories... maybe I'll just start writing them now. You know most of my life already... : )

[bell]

Hey! There's nothing wrong with putting two, three posts' worth of stuff in one! In fact, I rather like doing that, since I know my flist has a broad range of interests and by writing about multiple subjects, I'm more likely to irritate less people. XD

How has lj affected my life? *rolls eyes* Sucked up all my time, introduced me to new fandoms I definitely didn't need, shaken my faith in humanity, exposed me to sundry idiotic drama and wankery, and made me question what the hell I'm doing. (It's my fourth year on lj and my fifth blogging; you could say I've come disolusioned >D).

On the other hand, I've made dear friends, kept in contact with other friends who span at least three continents, learned about things I never imagined possible, found hours of entertainment, became more informed about different corners of the world, found pieces of (mostly fan)fiction that I fell in love with... in spite of what I said above, I'm not leaving lj anytime soon.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

I suppose there's nothing wrong with it, but that one was particularly poorly formatted and still irks me, in an amusing sort of way.

Ah, I like your bipolar summary of your LJ experience. :) Definitely agree with the unfortunate exposure to human stupidity, though that's nothing new. The bright side of LJ is you can tweak your friends-list so you don't have to see the idiots most of the time. Unless they friend you and force you to go look up how to get rid of them.

[nicocoer.livejournal.com]

I could have sworn I commented more then once. . .

~N~

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Well, now it's twice!

I'm pretty sure we've spoken more than once too. The algorithm only counts comments in my journal, so the other conversations probably happened over at house_wilson or somewhere.