Why have a livejournal in the first place?

[xiphias]

goljerp wonders in his most recent post why he has a livejournal in the first place (and suggests that this might be an interesting thing for people to explore in their own journals.)

In my case, it's easy. I have a livejournal because Lis made me. Two reasons: she thought some things I said were clever and I should tell more people them, and she wanted me to bitch to someone else for a change.

Comments

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

...bad username? perhaps they don't.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Quotation marks come in pairs. Quotation marks come in pairs. Quotation marks come in pairs.

[gingicat]

Ah yes, I've done that. *sigh*

[kiya]

I have a livejournal in significant part because I find it very hard to have a nesting relationship with someone I don't have the opportunity to share mundanities and banal stuff with due to him being on the other side of the freaking continent. And sending "This is the pointless banal stuff that I did today" emails sort of misses the point of establishing effortless pooling of mundanity.

It has also, weirdly enough, coincided and partly initiated me having a social life again locally, which is also good. I should come out from under the rock sometimes.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

I have a LJ because (a) several friends who'd more or less vanished from our old Usenet haunts lured me over here and (b) once I got used to it, I found it a very good subsitute (or more properly, addendum) to the paper journaling I've done all my life, especially since my handwriting has degraded to the point where I can barely read it.

I write almost as much under private filters as I do publicly, and download it all each month to to save and, on occasion, print.

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

I initially got one at the urging of a friend who wanted me to be able to read some of zir semi-private posts.

After several months of only reading zir posts, and then only when zie asked me to, I started reading regularly. Then I started reading *other* people's posts.

Then I started posting, because, well, I had this resource, I might as well use it.

I suspect that this phase will last another couple of months, and then I will lose interest, as I do with almost anything that requires effort on my part.

[rosefox]

I don't even remember anymore. I think it was mostly because I suck at keeping paper journals and thought this might help me stay with it. Little did I know....$

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

As a kid I wanted people, but people of *my* choice, to read my diary and tell me what they thought, give me advice and reality checks and so on. And, especially after my long swim in Denial during my first relationship, I wanted help staying honest. Also, as a kid I wanted to carry my diary everywhere, without risk of losing it; as a teenager I wanted to better be able to keep up with friends' lives all over the world (I've had penpals for over 15 years).

Livejournal does all of that. Yay. :)