the NPC who tells you the bridges are open

I spend a lot of time on my ipad, and I use Twitter and Google Reader (through Reeder) very heavily. Tumblr and Wordpress blogs make up a major proportion of my feeds, though I'm only a lurker on either platform. On the PC, I might be playing World of Warcraft or browsing blogs and IRCing. I've also got a concerning addiction to a clicky game called Unicreatures. And of course there's still LJ. Few enough posts on my friends page that I don't spend as much time as I did once upon a time, but it still matters to me.

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I'm enjoying the fruits of the fonsfaq project! Frequently (Or Not So Frequently) Asked Questions answered. If you haven't yet heard about it:

FONSFAQ stands for "Frequently (Or Not So Frequently) Asked Questions" (about a particular topic). Someone hosts a topic, preferably one per entry, and then in comments people can ask - i.e. leave prompts - or claim some issue relating to the topic that they have always wanted to explain/write about. The host then collects the links to all essays that people have written in reply to the prompts and everybody has a lot to read and learn! dingsi maintains the master list of FONSFAQs to date.

I'd rather like to participate and host my own FONSFAQ, but I can't think of any subject I know enough about. I could do Ireland - but I only live here, I don't know anything about it! If any of you have questions that I could help answer, I'd be happy to host one. Just, uh, not terribly wise or even slightly authoritative. I'm a citizen of books and the internet, not Ireland and the EU.

I'm participating in three_weeks_for_dw over the next few weeks. My plan is to post the full entries only on DW, probably with exceptions for locked entries, and link and summarise them on LJ. Anon and openid comments are enabled on DW. If you don't have a DW account and want one, please let me know! Same goes for if you're added on LJ but not on DW or want to know what I mean by "openid" or anything - I'd like to know. I want my participation in 3Weeks for DW to be a happy experiment and not leave anyone feeling isolated from the fun going on. 

I'm also doing a daily meme with DW-specific questions. The questions are behind the cut and I'll be updating this post to index the meme entries. 

( Read more... )

yeah, um, I read a lot. Just so you know.

1. Copy and paste your reading list list.
2. If you've subscribed to multiple journals by the same person, delete all but the main one.
3. Bold the name of everyone you know or have met in "real life."
4. Italicize people you've known, online or off-, for five years or more.
5. *Star* people you've gone to school with (primary/secondary/college/beyond).
6. [Bracket] people whose houses you've stayed at / who've stayed at your house / who've lived with you.

( warning: huge list )

(Do let me know if I don't have you marked properly. Especially around the five-year boundary: some of you I feel I've known forever, even though it's been just a few years, so I may have got confused some places. Also, Emma, I know I haven't stayed in your house but with the various things - hostel, rho's house, visiting - I decided to count you anyway. SUFFER.)

I honestly marvel at the number of people I've met because of LJ and DW. Primarily from LJ Support, where I made most of my long-standing friends. Guild Wars and Tokio Hotel fandom lay claim to another few (though those are indirectly from LJ Support too, but TH prompted me and midwintersong to go to Finland and meet anotherdream and malvien.) This once-friendless, silent, socially-anxious girl thanks you from the bottom of her heart for getting to know her, giving her a chance, helping her to grow up and become the pretty decent human and friend she now is. Fuck yes. Nothing has improved more drastically since I got the internet than my ability to believe that I can cope with and sustain human connections on an approaching-equal level.

I will say, though, that I want to figure out how to deepen the existing friendships and make more on that kind of level. Because while the thought of many people out there who have a generally positive view of me is /such/ a reassuring one, which gives me so much more trust in humanity, I'm specifically looking for more than that. The danger zone, where you get to know people well enough that they can hurt you and you can hurt them. Or, for me, where I consciously or unconsciously try to change to suit their images of me.

(I've such a grand army of defensive thoughts in here with me, not all of which I'm comfortable talking about because some of them are, basically, insults to anyone who is a friend or tries to become friends with me; dismissive thoughts which try to convince me it's not worth spending the time becoming friends with someone or approaching them - as my self-esteem increased and the "I suck too much" voices quietened, it changed to "they aren't that interesting, don't bother". I thought the first were bad enough, but at least they could be discussed without being /mortal insults/ to any friend I try to discuss them with. I *have*, however, found a gradual treatment for this nasty defence, and that's mindfulness meditation. Specifically metta, lovingkindness, meditation.)