DON'T READ THIS

1. LJ appeared in April 1999, the year when I…partied like it was 1999! Also, I was living in Austria at the time, hoping Y2K wouldn't mess everything up. Thanks to a lot of hard, advance work, everything was not messed up. If only we'd prepared as well for Covid getting out and into the world. But no.

2. As a child, I wanted to become a…long haul truck driver. But that's mostly because I like road trips. And the idea of sleeping in small spaces. I used to sleep in the closet. Now, I've turned a room into a closet, so... I'm not sure what I'm doing.

3. My favorite school subject was…I guess English. That's what I ended up majoring in, but I liked school in general, so I'm not really sure what the answer is here.

4. The tune of my carefree youth is...I'm Gen X, so were we really carefree? Well, we weren't as afraid. How about Sophie B. Hawkins - Did We Not Choose Each Other? Came out in the 90's. BEFORE LIVEJOURNAL, if you can imagine such a thing.

5. A book (or an author) that influenced me: Percival Everett ended up being a big influence. I like that he writes all kinds of different styles, and what with a recent movie, more people know about him. Craig Johnson is another favorite. Sure he writes mystery/thriller/western sort of things, but that doesn't stop him from writing in a literary style.

I wish we could all come back here to a simpler, more connected time.

But I came to my Friends Feed, and there's nothing here. And I've been gone a long time, so if there was going to be anything ever, there would have been something. Plus, I do like the impersonal/semi-personal thing on Facebook that's safe for family and the like.

But...somehow there was sure less vitriol here. More genuineness and kindness. Maybe it was just the time.

I don't know. I do know that I don't keep up on much that isn't in my main social media threads, and that doesn't seem to include LiveJournal, which is really a darn shame.