Current location:	home
Current mood:	sad
Current music:	the hum of my computer, burning a DVD

You can't masturbate ALL the time.
So here's where I am on a number of things at the moment:

Livejournal: I have no real motivation to keep updating this. I won't be announcing a hiatus or anything like that, and I certainly won't be deleting my account, but I'm finding it very hard to allocate time to updating this. I'm updating now because I don't feel like sleep, and there are dozens of thoughts buzzing around my head that I want to get written down (including why I don't feel like updating, interestingly).

Livejournal serves a number of purposes: In terms of reading, I use it to keep up with a number of online friends, I use its RSS feed capabilities to read most of the blogs that I read. In terms of writing, I use it as an archive of my day-to-day life (I go back and read through my own archives embarrassingly often), I use it to keep up with people, I use it to explore concepts and learn from other people, and I use it when I want to think about something.

I'm continuing to read all the journals on my friends' list (even if I don't comment much) but this entry is really more about the decreased writing I've been doing.

I read once that introverts like to solve problems ("problems" meaning anything that has come up in their life generally) by themselves, they like to go away and think about it until they come up with a solution, and then they might feel comfortable telling others, whereas extroverts will solve a problem by telling others.

I don't know if that's true or not, but if there's something buzzing around my head, I have to get it out there to stop it from buzzing. Used to be that livejournal was my first port of call for that (thus all the "hey, what do you guys think of this situation?" or "I need advice on x, y and z" posts of the past) but these days I don't have the time to sit down and nut out my thoughts in a livejournal entry.

So these days, I tend to actually talk to other human beings. Probably much healthier for me, and easier, but it means that
a) There's much less content on here, and
b) I have no record of what I thought about various things at various times.

That sort of sucks. I love having a record of what I thought about various things about various times. I loved getting feedback from several different people, and then going back in months or years time, seeing the comments, and thinking "Oh! So that's the moment where I started thinking x," or "Wow, I used to think y? poxy_report was right, that was a completely arsey opinion."

So while I'd like to resume recording my thoughts and opinions here, as they change and evolve, it's just a time issue. I'm working 9-5, five days a week (I got my hours at work doubled!) and I have something on most afternoons, so when I do get home, I either do some non-journal writing, do some editing, watch some TV, or just go straight to bed. (more often than not it's the latter. Can you still say "latter" when there's more than 2 options?)

In terms with keeping up with people, I now have more groups of people to keep up with than I ever have before. When I first started writing this journal, I was in highschool, and the only people I needed to keep up with were school friends and my direct family. I saw both of those groups every day, so the journal was really just for myself. Updates were spotty at best.

When I left highschool, a number of my highschool friends continued to read the journal, so I started to record my goings-on in some detail. It was also around this time that I made a lot of friends through livejournal (or the internet generally, but most of them had livejournals.)

When I moved to Brisbane, I was suddenly cut off from most everyone I knew, and I updated my livejournal a lot. I had oodles of spare time, and it was essentially the only means of communication I had with all my friends. (I genuinely didn't realise this until months later, but during those first few months living in Brisbane, I was must have been ridiculously lonely. I didn't see anyone I knew for at least a month at one point.)

Then I moved into a house with my cousin Gavin, poxy_report, and at the same time made friends with dozens of people through NaNoWriMo...again, most of whom had livejournals. Livejournal served this great triple purpose at that point; it kept me in contact with highschool friends, Nano friends, and (obviously) livejournal friends.

Then, alas, I got into impro, and started making friends with people who not only didn't have livejournal, but had never even heard of it. I continued to update, to keep the nano and livejournal people up-to-date with what I was doing (I'd mostly dropped out of contact with high-school people at this point.)

And then I moved to Canberra.

I'm not sure if it's as quantifiable as I'm making it, but I tend to meet a large group of people every now and again, became friends with most of them, and then a few months later only be in contact with the people I've "clicked" with the most. I've no idea if this is true of everyone or just certain types of people (or just me) but you can pretty much track my life as I move from group of friends to group of friends.

(for example, of my highschool friends I'm only in regular contact with one, and irregular contact with half a dozen. Of the nano people, I only still talk regularly to half a dozen (including obviously katydidinoz, who I now work under) etc etc.)

So when I moved to Canberra, my "most recent" group of friends were the impro people. Who don't use livejournal.

So to keep in touch with my friends, I didn't much use livejournal. I used Facebook, because that's where they all are these days. I wasn't regularly meeting up with these people who I was used to seeing once or twice a week, and so the best and easiest way to keep up with them was through Facebook.

Through Facebook which, conveniently, ALSO kept me up-to-date with highschool friends, nano friends, and most of my livejournal friends as well. I know a lot of people, and 90% of them are on Facebook.

(a lot of that group is also on Twitter, which I can update from anywhere via my iPhone.)

Also, and I realise that this is entirely my fault, my livejournal readership has been steadily dropping (the less you update, the less people want to read you. It makes complete sense, but it quickly turns into a vicious circle...) I can post something here, and...actually, here's a quote from an LJ entry I wrote earlier this year:

I was talking with jenerationb, and she mentioned something that I've been realising lately as well - you can spend twenty minutes turning a stray thought into a livejournal entry, or twenty seconds turning it into a Facebook status. What's more, Facebook statuses are more likely to get comments, and let's face it, most of us are comment whores. I know I am!

If I still worked from home, I'd have livejournal as my flip-to, and update regularly. But as it is, I work in an office, and someone a few months ago had words to my boss about the amount of time I spend on non-work-related websites. Since then, I've been a bit paranoid, and tend to make my flip-to something completely ambiguous, like Holly Lisle writing guides, or sites about sitcom theory.

Facebook (and Twitter) can be updated from my phone, but livejournal? Livejournal requires chunks of time that I just don't have, to an audience that I don't have much to do with any more, for a reward that (while much less shallow than a Facebook or Twitter update) isn't as immediately gratifying.

But I miss livejournal. I miss the discussions (particularly the heated ones) - I will go back regularly and read through comments on my more controversial posts. Some extremely intelligent people read this livejournal (packbat, aphephobia, lurkitty, just to name the first three that come to mind) and even going back a year later, the comments are fascinating to read.

I can't promise that I'll try to update more, because I have been trying, and the only way to do it is to sacrifice sleep. (which I'm not getting enough of already.) What's more, sleep-deprived entries are almost worse than no entries at all.

So I suppose this is a post (it was originally going to cover more than livejournal, but time slipped away, as it always does) to explain why I haven't been here, and to say that yes, I genuinely do miss it.

If I get a chance, I'll update tomorrow with some more of the things buzzing around my brain, but I can essentially tell you ahead of time that I won't. Alas.

Is anyone else out there in a similar state of livejournal-limbo? It's like accidentally wandering out of a party, and standing in the middle of the street, staring in, wishing you could be back at that party, but knowing that the doors are locked and it would take more effort than it's worth to get back in. You might as well go home. For you, the party's over...but there will be another party, some day, and you can only hope that it'll be as good.

That metaphor got a bit longer than I expected it to be, but you get the idea.