Just wanted to let everyone know that I’ve decided to move over to Blogspot. I’ve been toying with it for a few days, trying to decide, and I’ve discovered that I’m infinitely more comfortable there than I am here. I’ll be keeping my WordPress journal open and I may decide to double-post things in the event that one or another crashes, but I’ve decided to do the majority of my correspondence from my Blogspot journal (which, by the way, you can find here).

I used to always see the news reports of people losing their homes in a fire or those whose neighborhoods were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina and I felt so sorry for them. Now all of us former JSers share the same misfortune of understanding just how absolutely gutting it is to realize that your home is just…gone.

When I started my journal at JS, it was because a real-world friend of mine was already a member there (saellys). After I’d been there a year or so (with next-to-no activity, save for the occasional comment from Simon), saellys deleted but I was too lazy to delete mine, and so it gathered dust for months at a time. I’m not sure what brought me back, really, but I came back with a vengeance. I found the true heart of journalspace: the community. It wasn’t just me and my tiny little blog and a ton of strangers who didn’t give a flying fuck what everyone else on the site was up to; it was a living, breathing village of caring individuals. I made so many friends there, some of whom I became very close to, one in particular whom I’m more in love with than I ever imagined I could be (that’s the guy I mentioned earlier, to be clear. No, not Simon).

I grew up on journalspace. I signed up around 11:30 pm on Monday, December 27th, 2004, while I was doing laundry at my parents’ house. I made my first post about 2 hours later before I left for my own home. I was 19 years old and completely green to the world. Journalspace was officially declared null-and-void on the evening of Tuesday, December 30, 2008. When I lost my “home”, I’d been through more pain, heartbreak, growth, and happiness than I could have imagined on that cold Monday evening when I began my foray into the online world. I left journalspace a struggling, but self-assured 23-year-old…a world away from the struggling, self-conscious teen I entered it as.

I’m still having a bit of a hard time dealing with the idea that journalspace is no more. I initially thought that I was waiting to begin experiencing the grief, but now I realize that I’m just beginning the stages. Right now I’m beginning to go through the acceptance aspect. Journalspace was a massive part of my life. There were times that I don’t know if I’d have gotten through without it and the support I received through that medium. There will always and forever be a special place in my heart for that silly little website and I’ll miss it dearly. I can blog anywhere, but it will never be home. I don’t see how it could be.

I love you.