The people in my neighborhood

He called late last night and wanted to know if he should bring me Krispy Kremes, a question to which the answer is almost always "duh!" So when he arrived bearing a dozen hot glazed plus one maple iced, he stayed for a while and we chatted about Things. Not Heavy Things, just Things, which included movies, getting my mom to admit that she lives at Fred's now, and Diaryland. You see, a lot of Us have diaries now. I think that means We know each other differently than We did six months ago, or at least some of Us do. (And here I'll stop with the faux capitalization, because it's just plain silly.)

For the most part, we met on a newsgroup about six years ago, though Ed first revealed himself on our IRC channel after following the group for a while. Ed mentioned, and I concur, that one of the early impressions of reading posts there is that with few exceptions the denizens of that group were writing in their own voices about... whatever. Some posts about whatever started long discussions, others did not.

It's been an interesting experience, and if one of us managed to do something really interesting or memorable, another of us might get a deal to write a book about it. I suppose the most important thing was that the group allowed us to see in terms of real people that none of us was as isolated as we might have throught. At least, that's what my reaction was.

These people mean a great deal to me, although not everything I have been through with them has been entirely pleasant. Over the past few years, I've kept up with the group through a mailing list and an IRC channel, but I don't IRC as much as I used to. Lately, a subset of us have started diaries right here. This subset connects people who, as far as I know, don't necessarily like each other. (They might, though; I don't go out of my way to find out what my friends think of each other for the simple reasons that I don't care and it's none of my business.)

Now you're expecting me to link them all. I'm not going to, because I know some of them place a high value on their privacy, and a partial list wouldn't feel right to me. Suffice it to say that I'm very happy for these folks that they can write here in the semi-anonymous shadows of diaryland. I guess that includes myself.

before - after