The writings of 12 February 2003 are not the first entries to be contained within my LiveJournal for I have since gone back and back-filled it with transcriptions of earlier attempts at diary writing or with flashbacks from my memory. This last decade has been my single, longest attempt at writing any kind of diary.

So where was I in 2003…?

Job then: Electronic Content Quality Controller. Basically the guy to make the online versions of some scientific journals like the (Thrice) Monthly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Job now: Web and Digital Media Officer. The web designer for the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Oxford Brookes University. I also look after the social networking and do a bit of video work. Its a lot more creative work than a decade ago.

Writing then: I was in the wilderness years. The then titled Blood & Fire was started, but writing wasn’t go so well, so I was busy revising my previous novel Flyht. I still have a fondness for Flyht and may yet dust off the cobwebs to it.

Writing now: My second novel, Mr Tumnal, having published my first, The End Of All Worlds during the last year. I’m nearing the end of this one, after which I will have to revise it, edit it, and then decide whether to try the traditional route of publishing it or take the Indie route again.

Life then: Single. Dreadful levels of self-confidence. Recently bullied at work, starting this journal was part of a plan I had to try and get more confidence in me. About the same time I also became a First Aider at work and joined the Social Committee. Approaching my 30th birthday. Wore no jewellery. At the time of starting my journal I had no pets, although I would soon take on my first cat, Pepper.

Life now: Married. Met Emma on match.com we now have 8 cats, 3 chickens, 2 bunnies, 1 hamster, and some fish. I wear a wedding ring and a necklace – usually amber (I purchased an amber pendant whilst on holiday in Estonia in the summer of 2003), but sometimes Obsidian or a small piece of Celtic glass, or (rarely) Murano glass). In the intervening years I have had coaching for Aspergers, been made redundant from my job at (then) Blackwell Publishing (replaced by a machine), had a spell at OUP doing something similar but with online books, a short spell of unemployment, and been ‘restructured’ once whilst in my current job. I’ve also met my best friend, online, and since married her.

Not that I write these pages to be read, but for my own memory and enjoyment, but, for the fun of it, a poll…

Most obviously, my life changed. With meeting I suddenly found I had less time for writing about my thoughts, and my day and my life. I was also talking about it with her, at length, daily, and thus didn’t feel like writing about it all over again. So for the last three years there have been, regretfully, great swathes of time when things haven’t been written about.

Thankfully, my participation in the beast they call Facebook came along at about the same time, and through regular traulings of my status updates I was able to write up entries and post them retrospectively. Once up to date, I would tend to keep more up to date with things for a while but would then drift again, usually at weekends, and another swathe of gaps would open up to be backfilled in another few months.

Then came the phenonemon that is Twitter. This gave me the advantage that I could a) update my Facebook status from a small and inconspicuous addon to Firefox and the Twitter app in Facebook, and b) batch update my journal at 11pm every night viar the LoudTwitter service. This has meant that everything I write in either a twitter or facebook post gets recorded in the pages of my journal. In turn, this has meant that I no longer have great swathes of emptiness in my journal. It also means that what my journal has become is filled with tasty tidbits of information in 140 characters or less…

I want to write more again, like I used to. I want to record my thoughts, my feelings, my work, my life, and of course my writing in my journal as proper entries that get people thinking about them and talking about them. I’m not going to stop the batch updating from my Twitter musings because the archivist in me likes that the ephemeral gets to be permently recorded somewhere, but I would like these thoughts in 150 characters or less to be supplemental to the main content, rather than being the main content!

What do you think? What do you like, or what do you miss about these pages?

I’ve changed my resolve now. I’ve posted what’s written now, and will move forward from here and catch up with backdated entries where I can. This year is going to be a great year with lots of change and interest. I’m going to keep on top of documenting it.

Thank you.

solitaryway has mentioned recently, being dependent on a small red wirebound notebook […] writing in it madly – and this brought to mind my stack of A6 size, 0.5cm squared, spiral-bound notebooks that go back to 1991 (I have carried one with me without fail everywhere I have been ever since). This said, I realise now that in recent years, I have not been filling my notebooks with the plethora of writing, story notes and poetry, as I once did. Throughout the Alsager Years I was in daily contact with fellow writers and living and breathing words, whereas in recent years, I have been a solitary voice amongst people who read, yes, but who don’t themselves write. That is, until this last year…

In tinyjo‘s answers to my interview questions she writes about what LiveJournal means to her:

The other point here though is that the reason that this works for me is that it’s a conversation. I’ve never been able to keep a private diary – it just feels strange and almost pretentious. […] It’s not just going out into the void. I love to be able to get comments on my posts and as I take other perspectives on board and discuss new ways of seeing a situation that is also helping me to find new ways of thinking about/dealing with it and my emotions.

For me, I’ve found that LiveJournal has put me back in touch with writers and as a result the amount of my creativity has increased. Earlier this year I found myself pacing myself with soulsong and her novel, and more recently with the daily wordcount of siren_songs. I’ve also found amongst the community a number of fellow, practising (and even published) writers with whom I discuss online and by email/instant messenger, plot, character, and style, the development of my writer. It’s a useful place to critique our own and other’s work, and keeps my writing.

I’m glad that I’m no longer on my own. I’m glad I’m not still in that vacumn.

But how to begin? I did have an idea for a film today – well when I say today – it’s been brewing in my head for a few days now. It’s a kind of Richard Curtis/Love Actually inspired, ensemble kind of film. There’s a multitude of stories that surround four to six separate groups of friends. The connecting link between these groups, is the internet (for the sake of argument) LiveJournal world. It’s a bit of romance, with twisted plotlines – the central, overarcing story is this internet romance that comes good, defying some of the real life relationships happening in the stories spun around in the orbitting groups.

In the words of one friend: “so kind of using the little stories as dynamoes to generate meaning for the larger overarching story”

So the internet story ends up being more real than the life version. Me like that. It’s the opposite of what you would expect.

Of course, this said, I’m not sure if it’s the kind of story that I have the ability to write…

Doh.

I apologise for my needlessly introspective ramblings over the past few days. I’ve been an idiot. Someone please agree with me. Tell me I’ve been an idiot.

I promise you, normal service will resume on these pages soon.

I’ve been thinking lately that I have a very odd mixed attitude to my online identity. On the one hand, I’m very proud of my site and my journal. I’m happy for people who Google for me to find my website, and my website has my real name and my city on it which, to be honest, would be enough to find me in the phone book if I’m not ex-directory (I can’t remember – I’ll have to check). And yet I’ve only very recently made my livejournal email address avaible to my friends via my profile. Which is insane because anyone with a small amount of knowledge about LJ could deduce the existence of that address anyway. And LJ will mangle it to protect me from spambots. My birthday and location are still set to be private (which makes me wonder why I’ve filled them in) even though that much location info is already available on my website (and, taking a closer look, in my bio) and I’m not that sensitive about my age or anything. It doesn’t make sense.

What seems to happen is that given an plain text area, I’m able to be pretty relaxed about what I reveal about myself. However, presented with a checkbox saying “Hide information x from the general public” I almost always seem to choose the most paranoid setting I can possibly put it on. The only thing I can ascribe it to is a lifetime of checking the “Do not send me fucking junk mail or send my info to other people who might want to” box on every form I fill in – the legacy of being the daughter of a cynical advertising exec. In the cold light of day though, the whole thing seems inconsistent, so I’m going to overcome my nerves (what the hell does it matter if anyone knows my birthday anyway!) I’ve decided to mark it all as public. It’s possible that this will result in a flood of support requests over IM/email for me, but I am the master of the polite brush-off

Another thing I’ve been thinking about is putting some more concrete contact details online but here I’m not going to rush in here. If you don’t know me in real life, you could, given a stalker-like determination, get in contact with me IRL but the dividing line between contact in meat space and contact online is pretty clearly drawn at the minute, although there are a few of you who blur it on occasion. I’ve seen a lot of people put contact information in friends only or filtered posts, but I don’t really quite feel comfortable with either. I don’t necessarily want everyone who’s entries I want to read to be able to ring me up, but I think I’d find the choices in creating a custom filter for that pretty tricky. In the end, I think I want to control any transition from online to real world relationships at least to a certain extent and there’s a certain element of need-to-know. There’s not a lot of point in just randomly giving out my phone number – most of you will never want or need to phone me. So I guess this is something I’m going to put on a need to know basis. I’m not saying I won’t give it out – I just won’t be sticking it up for everyone to see.

I found the mood and direction of these thoughts to be strangely echoing some of my own thoughts earlier today. You see, I think I can understand where tinyjo is coming from with the uncertainty of online v. in person existance. I was just thinking earlier today, of my decision to not let the opinions of (a few) unhelpful and unkind people dictate what I want to do, and to be myself – starting this journal almost a year ago was part of that, to put myself out there and try some new, fun things.

This being so, why have I made the first three posts of this year *friends only*? Why have a great deal of my posts towards the end of last year been friends only? In part this latter question can be answered by explaining that these protected entries have been put behind a *writing* filter, as these may not be of interest to all people, but there are others…? Having discovered recently that there are some people who I would perhaps not have chosen to read my journal have found it, I guess I have subconciously elected to screen some of my thoughts into places that they cannot see. Why? I don’t shout about my journal but if I really minded people finding it I wouldn’t have put it so clearly within the framework of my website … it’s not even if I care particularly what they think or might say, as I don’t value the opinions that people of that mindset have.

Hrmm… it’s all very odd, and this post probably doesn’t even make any sense?!! I’m probably being overly-sensitive (as is my way) and make many more of my posts open to all. What do you think?

I had no idea when I started this LiveJournal that it would prove to be so useful…

I had no idea when I started this LiveJournal that it would prove to be so useful…