Gratitude [testing email post]

[liv]

Wow. I so have the coolest friends list ever. I post something whiny (locked because it's whining about work), and I'm in a really prickly mood and I start by ruling out the easiest ways of expressing sympathy and saying I don't want to hear from you unless you have something useful to say. I come back the next day and I have more than a dozen really wonderful comments.

Comments from people who cheer me up just by being there. Distractions, which are exactly what I need when I'm feeling down. Really sound, useful practical advice. Phone calls from people I care about. Supportive messages from people who are themselves coping uncomplainingly with much worse situations than anything I'm stressing about.

Also, my friends page is full of all kinds of good stuff, which is nothing to do with the fact that I was being emo on Wednesday, but it's really making me smile to read through it. There's a lot I want to respond to, either with comments or with my own spin-off posts, so the generally high quality of my friendslist is also a little frustrating because I can't engage with everyone properly. (I'm also frustrated because I'm missing a large proprotion of the friends page, I'm reading only my default filter and often just the posts, skimming the discussions.) But mostly it's really pleasing to know such erudite and witty and sensitive and articulate and generally wonderful people.

I have also, I think, set things up so I can post from email. Things like this post shouldn't wait until I next have LJ time, which could well be Sunday or Monday. It's not that I'm not allowed to read LJ from work, I don't think anybody is monitoring my usage, particularly, it's just that if I open LJ it will distract me for an hour at least, so it's better not to do that when I'm meant to be working! Anyway, this is a test to see if sending an email to the LJ posting system actually works as it should (other people's experience has suggested that it might mess up the formatting, but as long as it works, that's something).

Comments

[ploni-bat-ploni.livejournal.com]

Hi Livredor,

Finally got my limited mind wrapped around the challenge to post on your blog. Yay!

It still looks very lovely. When I have anything more significant to say, I will do so :-)

Take care!

[liv]

I'm sorry you found posting here a challenge. Do you think there's anything I can do to make it easier?

I'm really flattered you like the look, really!

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

It works. :))

[liv]

Thanks, it was helpful to get this comment as a confirmation. Since obviously I wasn't logging into LJ to check whether my post had worked. But you figured that out, which is why you made the comment. Thank you for being sensible.

[darcydodo]

It just put in hard carriage returns, is all. No big deal!

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

One can get round this by putting at the beginning the LJ tag for no-formatting, and then marking line breaks with <br />.

[liv]

Thank you both for pointing this out. The other alternative would be to tell my mailer not to wrap lines at 80 characters, I suppose, but doing line breaks manually is probably easier. Cool cool.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Save the cheeriup, and next time it might be enough just to look at it again.

[liv]

That is indeed a very good suggestion, thank you. I do generally find it cheering to have such lovely friends, but sometimes LJ helps me to make the connection between having good friends, and whatever it is I'm upset about at the moment.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

That reminds me, I should look look over that more often, I keep forgetting and then not having a magic happiness wand. It's not a panacea, but it certainly helps to have evidence that reminds you you're loved (which doesn't help with physical problems, but can get you into the right mood).