Syndication

One second before 9am on a Friday morning in January 2001, I sat at my desk and clicked a "submit" button. I had just finished reading my morning list of websites including Slashdot. One of the stories mentioned a site I had never heard before named LiveJournal.com. I forget what the story was about, but I was instantly intrigued with the idea of online journaling.

Until that point, I had written primarily in my paper journal. The subjects varied from programming ideas and reviews of the day, to my most private desires and fears. My ideal was that of de Vinci -- a union of all thoughts creative in a single book. Unfortunately, due to open nature in which I wrote in the journal, I would never imagine letting anyone else read it. Nevertheless, there were entries I would like share with others. When I came upon LiveJournal, I found my outlet.

At first, I had written carefully, anonymously. I did not want to betray anything that could identify me, not my name, my appearance, or my location. I hid behind the guise of a username, a misspelling of the word "Solstice". I thought it an apt term as I felt I was constantly torn between two states. I had written as a virtual unknown for almost a year. My journal was just one among countless many. I was aware of the friend system but thought it somehow rude to use it. I didn't even friend the journals I read at the time, I simply bookmarked them.

I remember once receiving an anonymous comment in the early days of my LJ. It was the most personal entry I had written to be read by others. In it I had wondered if I had been living as if I were already dead, and I was just waiting for the final rattle. The comment implored that I was very much alive, even if under the shadow of terrible secrets. Although not technically my first comment, it was the first that struck a resounding chord. While I had slowly acquired a group of journals to read and readers of my own, I did not reach out. It was still, in many ways, just a website to me.

It was in my senior year of college that began to change. For the first time in my life I had a word to describe what I was: Transgender. Armed with that unique key, I reached out into the digital expanse. I found resources, tips, support groups, and even people such as myself with the same problem. For the first time in my life, I was no longer alone.

LiveJournal has been an incredible resource to me, both psychologically and pragmatically. LiveJournal communities became my support mechanism. I read the experiences of others. It was a LiveJournal user that provided me with a link to foreign pharmacy where I first bought my supply of hormones. It was another user that directed me to information about how to change my name. LiveJournal was the first, (semi) public space I was truly myself.

And now, I must take a step forward, leaving it a step behind.

One may think this is due to LJs recent lack of reliability or it's poor user policies. While this is a contributing factor, it is not the source. Several years ago, the site suffered a blanket outage. It did not last hours, but nearly a week. In my withdrawal I began to wonder, what if it never comes back? Everything is ultimately capricious, websites included. Someday a day would come when LiveJournal was no longer maintained, trumped by a competing service, or simply too poorly maintained to use. The ideal solution would be to move my journaling to an off-site resource, one over which I had complete control.

I could have written something, of course, but there were serious technical limitations. I simply didn't have the time or knowledge to make such a thing. A crossposting system was time-consuming to implement. Manual crossposting was an annoyance. Even if those problems were solved, I'd be faced with an uphill battle for developing new features. Access control was also a challenge. While I did eventually set about developing a web content manager, it was always a lot of work for little benefit.

A year ago I decided to convert my website to an open source content manager. I couldn't be happier with my site today. Features were now a matter of configuration, not development. Eventually I even found a way to crosspost to LiveJournal. Still, my website remained public, whereas my LJ was increasingly private. I had never bothered to implement granular access control as I didn't not yet see the need.

Recent events as well as the general skiddishness amongst my friends list, however, have prompted me to action. So, starting with this entry, all of my entries, public or private, will originate from my website.

Here's how it works: I have created a "inner group" on my site. Those who are logged in, and are a member of said group are able to access restricted media. This includes journal entries, images, and so forth. For convenience, I will continue to crosspost to LiveJounal. You will not need a user account on my site to continue reading my entries. I will also continue to read my friends list as I have done for years. The only thing that's changing is the origin of my entries.

I thank LiveJournal for all it's given me. Now it's time to broaden my horizons.