MY Anniversary Tribute

When I started my journal on AOL, almost a year ago (September 25, 2003, as it states on my sidebar) I didn’t realize I was getting into, almost on the ground floor of, a "movement." I don’t know if it was yet a community back then. I got my first comment on my third entry. But it would be two months before I would see regular comments appearing on my journal. Mary and Donna were my first two recurring readers…

How can I describe how it felt to write something, and, for the first time in my life, actually have someone READ it? I had been keeping paper journals since I was in high school. All those years, I wrote and wrote and wrote, words for MY eyes only. I would often go back and read what I had written. And I would appreciate it as decently legible, valid…even poetic at times. But that was only MY judgment. I may not have known it then, but I yearned for someone, ANYONE, to read my thoughts. How I wanted to communicate with someone other than myself!

I have never been a "joiner." Back in the late sixties/early seventies, when and where I grew up, there were the "jocks," which included the cheerleaders, pom-pom squad, and anyone else who went to pep rallies and screamed their hearts out for the school, the team, the status quo… And there were the rest of us. Those of us who would have been social outcasts in any other generation, were a movement unto ourselves. WE, the unpopular masses, were the cool ones. We were the "silent majority" who had our own ideas about life, popularity, and what things were REALLY valid. Back then, during the anti-Viet Nam War era, counterculture was where it was at. And I was counterculture. But even that social stratum had its rules. "Joining" was out. "Individuality" was in. Apathy was key. You didn’t acknowledge or care about anything that was the accepted "norm." Think for yourself. Do your own thing. That "anti-establishment" philosophy has followed me all these years. It’s become a very integral part of my personality.

So, thirty years later, when I began to realize that, by creating my AOL journal, I had actually joined something, it was almost a turn-off for me. As much as I wanted to write things that other people might actually read, the idea of being part of a "group" tended to drive me away. In my experience, "groups" were things that were established to exclude certain people. I wasn’t completely certain I wanted to belong to one.

And yet, one of the long-held, fervent desires of my heart was being realized. People were actually reading what I had to say. And commenting on it. It was a high from which I have not been able to wean myself since the first comment appeared on my journal eleven months ago.

Yes, I know…I have been one of the chief detractors of the "Editor’s Picks" and the "Journal Awards," and anything else that smacks of turning the community into a contest.. But I want you all to know how much I DO appreciate AOL Journals. The community. The support. The love. The opportunity to communicate.

Happy Anniversary, AOL Journals. And many more!