happyIn October 2000, I registered a domain for myself: bluearmadillo.net. I didn't know what to do with it, so it just sat there for a few months, gathering virtual dust. I remember talking to
fox1013 about it at the time; she suggested a vanity site, but I wasn't sure I was vain enough for one of those. Then one day I happened to be reading an essay by montykins in which he wrote, "if I have an anecdote or story at the top of my head, I post it and move on. And if I don't have anything ready, well, you get a rambling piece like this." And I thought, "I can do that!" And so I did, starting on my birthday two years ago today.After I was laid off, I had trouble motivating myself to write. When I got a new job, I tried to get back into it, but it was hard. I had grown accustomed to writing at work, and I no longer had time to do that. Meanwhile, I had obtained a LiveJournal account. At first, I didn't even plan to use it; the only reason I wanted it was so I didn't have to comment anonymously in other journals. But then it sort of sucked me in. Writing in LiveJournal provides two things that Blue Armadillo didn't readily provide: a built-in audience, and feedback. Intoxicating. Eventually, I reconfigured Blue Armadillo to pull its content from my LiveJournal.
Anyway, the point is that I've been doing the online journal thing for two years now. What I'm doing now is quite different from what I started doing back in 2001, but conceptually it's the same. And I still enjoy it, so I guess I'll stick with it for another year.