Thanks for the Memories

Wed, 20 Nov 2024 03:17:27 GMT

Eighteen years ago, in one of my more sentimental moments, I blogged this:

This is what it's like to grow old.

I've lived my life thinking: while I'm young, I'll live it up. That way I'll have a huge collection of wonderful memories to relive when I get old, and can't do all those fun things anymore.

I guess I'm over the crest of that proverbial hill, because when I look back, I'm filled with hundreds upon hundreds of memories of my life.

I see now why old people feel isolated. It's not because they're alone; it's because they've lived an amazing, deeply touching novel that no one else will ever read.

So many people and places and events have touched my life, but no person will ever share the things I remember, the things that even today bring up deep feelings that toss me around like a toy boat toy boat toy boat.

Nearly two decades of life experience later, that image – of one’s life being a rich and meaningful story that no one else can ever fully appreciate – remains a powerful truth. That’s doubly so because most of our lives only persist within our own memories, locked within a single mind with no effective way to share them.

Don't Look Yet!

But all is not entirely lost. For many of us there are, in fact, a few precious, long-buried and boxed-up artifacts from those distant times. Fragments of the past that can be seen and touched, perhaps even photographed and shared.

So partly to share them with those of you who care, and partly just to honor the sacred memories of my life, today I begin what will probably be a long and ongoing new project: digging up and posting about some of the more interesting memorabilia that I’ve collected over six decades of living, laughing, loving, and adventuring.

I hope you’ll join me on this journey back through the times of my life. Maybe some of you will even see an item you recognize from our shared past. That would be delightful!

My plan is to share one item at a time, posting regularly, maybe once or twice a week. Photos will be accompanied by a brief writeup. Everything will be tagged “memorabilia”, and I’ve added a link to that growing collection of posts in my blog’s sidebar.

But the journey has already begun, in some sense. There are a handful of artifacts that I’ve already highlighted in past blogposts. So along with this introduction, I’ll begin by linking to those.

In vaguely descending order of their age, here are:

I’ll leave you with those for now, but you can look forward to lots more, as I begin this new series of postings. I’m certain I’ll enjoy it, and I hope you do, as well.

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さようなら LiveJournal!

Sat, 26 Feb 2022 18:53:26 GMT

It’s finally time for us to move on, LiveJournal.

You and I had a good run together. Twenty years, in fact, since our relationship started back in 2002. 1,350 journal entries, between my general and cycling blogs.

But boy have you changed. In 2007 you were bought out by a Russian company, but I stayed loyal to you when most of my friends left for your alter-ego: Dreamwidth.

Since then you have: fired your American staff, broke a promise by relocating your servers to Russia, adopted partisan Russian censorship policies in your terms of service, prohibited other blogging platforms from crossposting to LJ, and made it difficult for users to export their existing blog entries to other systems.

I don’t know at what point your behavior crossed the line, but it obviously has. At this point, my earlier choice to distinguish between LJ’s policies and those of the Russian state seems naïve.

With that distinction removed, it becomes much harder to pay for a service hosted in an authoritarian country that is engaged in a clandestine hacking war upon the United States, and an unjustifiable invasion of neighboring Ukraine.

Between LiveJournal’s own policies and those of the Russian state, things have finally gone too far. So after 20 years with you, I’ve finally joined Dreamwidth, who will host my general and cycling blogs going forward.

Yup. Twenty years, beginning on February 16 2002 with this post, where I shortsightedly stated, “You shouldn't expect to see very much in the way of public postings.” That was the first of 1,350 entries (so far).

I found it telling that I observed that 20th anniversary by posting a status update on my Facebook, rather than LJ. Previously, I’d written about my feelings on the fifth anniversary and the tenth anniversary of my blog.

Henceforth all new postings will appear on Dreamwidth, where I’ve imported all my old LJ posts and settings. As you might expect, a few things didn’t come across perfectly, but I’ll try and iron those out over time. If you notice anything missing, broken, or ugly, I’d appreciate if you let me know.

As a reader – however infrequently that might be – you can expect my blogs to continue as they always have, save for the obvious change of domain name. Hopefully the only change you’ll notice will be a return to posting more often.

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Ornoth

Thanks for the Memories

さようなら LiveJournal!