Now I've got it, what do I do with it?

[outsidetheparty]

[that is, I believe, the required title for anybody's second livejournal and/or blog post.]

So I started this thing purely because so many conversations I've had lately have given me exactly the same sensation I used to have sitting around with friends in Hamburg: they were all perfectly fluent in English and were very nice about switching languages for my benefit when I was around, but there were always in-jokes or side conversations I couldn't get; didn't have access to.

Hi, I'm Daniel. My friends speak LJ. And all the interesting stuff is friends-only.

(Not that I'm saying in any way that that's bad or weird or anything; I don't think the LJ stuff in any way detracts from "real" conversation -- it's just another channel for more and different types of equally real conversation. Which you all know already. But reading that over, it sounded like I was being critical, which isn't what I mean at all. Anyway.)

But just sitting quietly and sucking in all your friends-posts seems a little creepy. So I oughta do something with this space.

I know the "J" in LJ stands for "Journal", but suspect that would be crushingly dull; I could probably break 90% of the entries down into a chart of Number Of Hours Spent Sitting In Front Of Things:

* 11 hours: computer
* 2 hours: television
* 2 hours: paperback
* 1 hour: table, misc. meals
* 0.5 hours: easel
* 0.5 hours: yard (front)
* 0.25 hours: pornography

...and so on. Which might be interesting in the aggregate, especially if I animated bar graphs over time -- hmm -- but not so much the sort of thing you'd want to read every day. I'm not exactly leading the most dynamic and active lifestyle at the moment, is what I'm saying. It's nice and all, but I'm no International Man of Mystery.

I could crosspost stuff from my "real" website, but I'm wary of endangering your secret superhero identities. And I'm not sure about the etiquette of cluttering all your friends pages with giant photos every time the dog does something adorable.

I could take up slash, which I'll grant you does look like fun. Especially the pornography aspect. Because pornography is always fun. In fifteen minute increments. But given that the TV I'm watching lately is Sopranos episodes from three years ago and M*A*S*H episodes from I don't want to think about how many years ago, that seems a bit impractical as well.

I can't even complain about the guys at the office, because I'm them. It. Whatever.

I could write long, rambling posts about not knowing what to write about! Yeah! That's it! Perfect!

Comments

[kassrachel.livejournal.com]

I could write long, rambling posts about not knowing what to write about! Yeah! That's it! Perfect!

snerk. A time-honored tradition, you realize. *g*

When I started my lj I had no intention of posting about my life here -- I wanted the account so I could read my [fannish] friends' journals easily in one place and comment on them without having to be called "anonymous," was all.

Then I figured, okay, I'll post about fannish stuff (because this is where all the good conversations are), but I still won't post about my life. (And you can see how well that worked.) These days I do some of both, though -- as you noted -- most of the really personal stuff is flocked. LJ's also a fun place to post the random wacky links you're not putting up on MeFi anymore. Also, if you get bored, I can point you to some of my favorite LJ memes -- the onion meme, the 100 Things About Me meme -- which are fantastic timewasters, and also provide interesting ways to generate content, if one is so inclined.

The critical thing to remember here is, many of us use lj as a procastinatory tool, which means we like long rambly posts that aren't really about anything. *g*

[osirusbrisbane.livejournal.com]

Actually, I'd love a weekly graph that gives the times you spend sitting in front of things, both for that week and aggregated up to that point. You could always put it (and dog/roomba photos) behind cut tags if you feared clogging up your friends friendslists, thereby reducing the available space for slash and people writing about how much time they spend sitting in front of things NOT in graph form.

[outsidetheparty.livejournal.com]

Actually, I'd love a weekly graph that gives the times you spend sitting in front of things,

No, no, because then I would lose my carefully cultivated illusion of "not a loser". And that wouldn't do at all.