Time to Refresh... My Stuff
Mar. 29th, 2025 10:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_gneechIncluding this page! I'm not sure what I'm going to do or how I'm going to do it, but I've been having a kind of an odd slow-motion epiphany over the past few weeks, that more or less boils down to "The world is gonna do what the world is gonna do, and wishing it would do something else isn't going to help."
Sounds obvious when I write it down in black and white, I know, but that's kinda the point of an epiphany, you finally actually understand something you've known intellectually all along.
This doesn't mean fatalism or just passively accepting anything that comes my way—I'm not about to just roll over and not try to create things or make the world a better place. But it does mean decoupling my thoughts and emotions from outcomes, and doing my best to let go of "I wish it woulda..."
For example! This very page. This is the rather pale ghost of my LiveJournal, which in its heyday was a major and vibrant part of my life. It was rare that I went a day without posting at least something, and it was much more common to post two or three times over the course of the day. I felt like I had a lot to say, and I felt like people were listening, and there were a lot of other people on my feed that I wanted to hear from.
It was great, and I loved it, but it's gone and not coming back. I can either lament that and wish it wasn't so, or I can look at Dreamwidth, here and now, for what it is, and decide what (if anything) I want out of it.
Right now, I don't know. These days a lot of what I would have posted to LiveJournal goes either to my Patreon, to Mastodon, or to my Discord community. Does this Dreamwidth page offer something that they can't or don't? That's the kind of thing I'm thinking about.
No conclusions yet. :)
-The Gneech
Sounds obvious when I write it down in black and white, I know, but that's kinda the point of an epiphany, you finally actually understand something you've known intellectually all along.
This doesn't mean fatalism or just passively accepting anything that comes my way—I'm not about to just roll over and not try to create things or make the world a better place. But it does mean decoupling my thoughts and emotions from outcomes, and doing my best to let go of "I wish it woulda..."
For example! This very page. This is the rather pale ghost of my LiveJournal, which in its heyday was a major and vibrant part of my life. It was rare that I went a day without posting at least something, and it was much more common to post two or three times over the course of the day. I felt like I had a lot to say, and I felt like people were listening, and there were a lot of other people on my feed that I wanted to hear from.
It was great, and I loved it, but it's gone and not coming back. I can either lament that and wish it wasn't so, or I can look at Dreamwidth, here and now, for what it is, and decide what (if anything) I want out of it.
Right now, I don't know. These days a lot of what I would have posted to LiveJournal goes either to my Patreon, to Mastodon, or to my Discord community. Does this Dreamwidth page offer something that they can't or don't? That's the kind of thing I'm thinking about.
No conclusions yet. :)
-The Gneech
no subject
Date: 2025-03-30 03:37 am (UTC)Not doing the Patreon thing because I'm not sure of the tax implications, although I do have presence on Discord and Mastodon/Fediverse. I stay here on Dreamwidth because it's a continuation of what I did on LiveJournal, and I like having that option available to me.
no subject
Date: 2025-03-30 02:29 pm (UTC)LJ is still there, just vewy vewy quiet.
no subject
Date: 2025-03-30 06:03 pm (UTC)But then, so is the White House, so...
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Date: 2025-03-30 09:57 pm (UTC)Dreamwidth is a significantly better posting platform than Patreon. I subscribe to so many Patreons and it's just a disaster trying to find anything in the archives. Even when the Patreon owner uses collections or tags, it's still a mess. And my Patreon home feed is completely nonfunctional since they stopped putting it in reverse chronological order and did ... whatever it is they're doing now. And Patreon is trying to drive me out of getting email by mailing locked posts and having completely cryptic email settings. (What is the difference between "new paid posts" and "other posts"? Does "paid" mean "the ones your tier pays for" or "locked posts"? I have no idea.)
... y'know, I spend over $500 a year on various Patreons, but I hate using Patreon's actual site. x_x
But of course, Patreon allows you to get paid, and I totally understand that's an incentive to post there instead of here. :/
no subject
Date: 2025-03-31 10:40 am (UTC)I know that some creators have a very vibrant community within their Patreon; Tigerknight always seems to get a lot of chatter for instance. My peeps are scattered to the winds by comparison, but I am always eager to connect via whatever venue.