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I thought I'd go ahead and post this. Similiar to what I did last year during NaNoWriMo, I'm taking a break from LiveJournal (along with Twitter and Tumblr, to be honest). I'll be checking my friend's list every once in a while and I might post a couple of updates on how the story is coming along, but other than that, you won't hear from me. Unless, you know, something big happens.

See you in a month, guys! And good luck to everyone else who's participating this year! :)

I'm going to go with the first thing that popped into my head: Facebook.

Don't get me wrong, Facebook has its good qualities. It's a good way to keep in touch with friends, but you know what? So many of the people we "friend" are the ones we don't really care to talk to, write to, or ever see again. We friend them because ignoring them will only make them mad or offended. Also, I think Facebook has kind of spoiled us. We can know anything about anyone at the click of a mouse. Then we post pictures of ourselves and our loved ones for our friends to see, but anyone who's smart enough can find a way to look at them, too. And no one really thinks about the consequences to some of the information they decide to share. Employeers can look at your profile pages, and if your page is public and a major portion of your status updates are about partying and drinking, then that might cost you a job.

I do love LiveJournal, I'm starting to really love Tumblr, and I like Twitter, and I like Facebook enough to use it to keep in touch with some college friends. But at times, I do think the world might be a little better without Facebook. It's one of them double-edged swords. The world was fine before it was ever invented, but now it feels like the world can't live without it.

I was a senior in high school and I was walking into my second period classroom. Second period was anatomy, and my teacher was this strict, kind of frigid woman who could only be described as old school. There were hardly ever any videos to watch in her class, yet she was watching television when me and the rest of my classmates all walked in. And that's how we find out. We sat down and watched the news coverage in silence, and at 9:03, we watched as Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower.

I can't begin to imagine what it was like for the people who were there, but I know I could live to be one hundred years old and I'll never forget the image of that plane crashing into that tower. And neither will my anatomy teacher. She told us her father was one of the many people who built those towers. A tangible piece of her family history, and she was watching that piece crumble to the ground.

I didn't lose any loved ones that day. I didn't lose much of anything. But what I gained was a better understanding and awareness of the world around me. Horrible things happen and they'll always happen... but in the days that followed, we all saw that the human spirit is a force that cannot and will not be crushed, so long as there are people who care.

Originally posted by deathpixie at Signal Boost: Return of the DDoS

I can't explain it. I've gotten to the point where I check my LiveJournal only once a week, and that kind of persuaded me to do, if you will, a gleaning. I've gone through my friends list and my communities, and I did a massive cut. I was at the point where I was skimming through pages of entries, not giving them the attention they deserved. And some friends? I couldn't remember the reason why I added them to my friends list in the first place, nor could I recall anything that was going on in their lives. And when that happens, I think you realize you're not being a very good friend to them. I can't the whole "it's not you: it's me" line, but that's the truth in this case. If I wasn't being a very good friend, or if I hadn't heard from someone I wasn't all that close to for over a year, I de-friended them. And as for communities: if I wasn't all that interested in the subject anymore, I left.

This message will be public, because this friends cut was unplanned and I don't want anyone to think I was mad at them. I needed to do this for myself. Everyone I have ever friended has been nice and wonderful, but my friends list was becoming a burden instead of a warm spot in my life. I hope you all can understand that.

May God be With You:

Carrie