Reading the Times Past

[paragraphs]

Like a lot of you guys I am in the process of saying goodbye to LJ. I've found myself curiously sad, depressed even, as I've been reading through old posts. Not from my paragraphs account, but from my previous one that I still have tucked away, deep in LJ. I'll be deleting that one.

I miss the days gone by. I miss the confident silliness I had, being in the throes of my new life, when the kids were still home, when my relationship with N was so new and shiny (we are still, even more so, great friends, but not in the same way which is good, very good, and what needed to be - but still, sigh....), when fandoms were fun, and I was traveling every chance I got to the UK and to Germany (and Canada once! and here!) with N. A lot of living crammed into a decade. How I miss those days!! That's why I want to keep everything in that old LJ - so I can trot it out every few years, and remember the amazing fun and crazy times.

Nostalgia. It makes me happy and also very blue (and I can't even write the word "blue" without being sad, because of my friend with that nickname who passed away way way way too young - we met on lj, and she visited me once. How I miss her too!).

Going to be 55 next birthday. Job is great - house is good (got my roof fixed after a year of fighting for it), about to go to Seattle for a week, and I am going back to Sirens in October - I've made some great new friends from that! But I keep thinking... what is next?

WHAT IS NEXT???

I really don't know. The kids both have SOs, pets of their own, good jobs, and are doing great. My dogs are getting older and I've recently gone bettafish crazy. But I keep thinking... what is next?

I just really don't know. Right now, I just want to get out of here, go to Seattle, have fun with my friend, go to Norwescon and I hope there I will come back supercharged, but a lot of the times I kinda feel like I wasted too much time.

Finally found a Dreamwidth style that I like. At least that is something. Yeah?

What is next, C?

(please if you see this and are on dreamwidth, come be my friend there... would love that).

Comments

[used_songs]

I'm not a very nostalgic person, but even I'm a little sad about finally letting go of LJ. I know what you mean about fandom - I haven't let myself love a show or a fandom as much after Torchwood. I still do fan stuff, but it's different.

What's next? Who knows, right? When I was little I thought adults knew what they were doing; it turns out that we don't!

[paragraphs]

Yeah - at times like these I wish my mom was still alive so I could complain to her! :)

Yeah - I did get into Merlin and even Teen Wolf but nothing all-encompassing like Torchwood. And now I am afraid to watch the show because I might just be disappointed... :)

[annofowlshire]

Enjoy Seattle and Norwescon! Makes me a little homesick....

I look forward to hearing what is next. It sounds like you've done a lot of great things already, so it will be spectacular ^_^

[paragraphs]

I am sitting here trying to guess who you are - no matter, HI I LIKE YOU. :)

[annofowlshire]

Hee! Sorry for the confusion, we friended on LJ last year with the GWYO friending meme, and then a few months later, to make things more confusing, I changed my username XD

[paragraphs]

SEE I am legitimately confused. LOL! :) No worries, I have you now, GYWOer.

[theemdash]

It's so hard to let go of LJ because it means admitting that it's over and that "the good 'ol days" will never come back. It's about admitting something is gone, even though it's been gone for years. That's hard!

You're not the only person who has mentioned something like "confident silliness" being something that they've lost. Looking back at old journal entries, I see someone who was much more confident about being silly and about posting anything. But I don't think it's something that's gone (the way Old LJ is gone, I mean). WE CAN RECLAIM OUR SILLINESS! Honestly, I hope people do. It's hard to take ourselves so seriously all the time.

What is next, C? That's something we all sometimes need to figure out.

[paragraphs]

It is funny though - I know you have, but I have also retained SO MANY friends from 'back in the day.' I have a huge, daily Torchwood email group - we've been looping for years now - I have friends from LJ I just email with, some I refound on twitter and talk to there, and others on FB and talk to there. And then there are those DW/LJing, which is cool.

The only thing I really don't do anymore is fandom involvement, and writing fanfic.

I definitely want to reclaim my silliness. I know it is still in me. :)

[theemdash]

I have friends from IRC and a fandom listserv I was on about 20 years ago. It's so easy to retain internet friends because so many of us wind up on the same services (and we never really leave the internet—a person I knew from a freaking Prodigy bulletin board is a FB friend). And if you retain one friend, so and so will know where so and so went or what name they're using now, etc. But things change about the community, or its location shifts, or just... life! I'd love to see interactions come back to the journal format, though. I think it's so much more intimate than any of the other options out there.

Trust me, you are so silly.

[paragraphs]

LOL I too have Prodigy friends still! Somehow we refound each other - were a pretty big group from one of the writing boards. Our youngest member was in his 20's and now just turned 40... egads! I have no one from AOL though - that just wasn't the same. Prodigy is where I was in my very first fandom, Star Trek, but we wrote original characters, so it was also where I first started to write. Golly gee whiz.

I kicked myself off FB for the weekend - I have a LOT of work to get done before my trip to Seattle and Norwescon. I so hope to have the time of my life there... LOL!

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

::HUGS::

Reminiscing can have those effects on us, can't they?

I'm sure there are good things next. Many good things.

I already have you friended there. :)

I hope we'll build a good writing community there.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Good things will come!

[paragraphs.livejournal.com]

I hope so - I know Norwescon will perk me up - just getting away will! I also am a definite for Sirens again - I just HAVE to go. NEEEEEEEEED. LOL. Will you be going this year?

I know next project likely will answer a call I got at last year's Sirens to write a book with an older protagonist. I'm toying with ideas now.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Alas, since my stroke I don't dare that altitude any more. I had enough trouble with it before!

[paragraphs.livejournal.com]

Oh my gosh I am sincerely worried about the altitude, since they moved it back to Vail, but am going anyway. It has been decades since I've been to the mountains proper.

[pir8fancier.livejournal.com]

I think that partly what keeps our brains perking, the search. Keep searching because the search always opens your mind to new things and new people. It's when you STOP searching that I think there is a problem.

[stargazer60.livejournal.com]

I don't use LJ like I used to. I have a Dreamwidth...but moving 12 years worth of entries? I wonder how long that would take.

Still....I'd rather not lose all that history.