I note that I mark three years of keeping a weblog today. I find, some 1600 journal posts and nearly 20,000 comments posted later, that I still very much enjoy the fun of self-publishing in this interactive way.
Thanks to my LiveJournal friends, my song "Trinity Trail" is now Number 31 on the Electronica: Mellow Sounds chart at Soundclick.com. Other songs and poems and silliness has gotten constant encouragement, and sometime needed parade rain.
Thanks to my LiveJournal friends, I have generated a tremendous amount of poetry and creative writing in the last three years, most of it bad,
a trifle of it good, and a couple of things even published. As finding the discipline to complete and submit is always my challenge, the exercise of near-daily writing has been very good for me. It's been a good process for self-discipline in general, at home, at work, at play.
I am most grateful for the many friendships I've made through LiveJournal. When I began my weblog, I thought of it as a writing exercise only. I never dreamed I'd meet so many fun and kind people. So, thank you all for that. I have read cool posts, great poems, seen wonderful art, and noticed how the world falls apart and comes together for so many people in so many ways.
I see LiveJournal as one phase of a transition to further internet connectivity, in the same way that, say, Compuserve forums and internet message boards and even the dreaded AOL chat rooms used to serve that function. I think that the changes wrought by the internet in general and weblog culture in particular are striking and remarkable.
I can readily think of dozens of people on my reading list whom I wished I knew far better than I know now, and a dozen or two more whom I am thrilled to know as well as I do. I also find that I read many journals and enjoy so many of them.
Three years is a long time, or not a long time, depending on how you look at it. But it's been a fun ride, and I'm not unhorsed yet.