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

[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.