Livre d'Or

jjhunter made a Friending meme. I sort of participated, but I also got very busy around the time it went up, so I've not quite kept up with who's added me or really followed up at all.

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Anyway. Belated greetings to the new people I found via the friending meme, or who otherwise started reading recently. Please feel free to ask me any questions you feel curious about, my obscure interests or something you'd like to know more about about my opinions or my life (as long as it isn't personally identifying or likely to involve other people's privacy). Or indeed, just questions that you've often found elicit interesting answers from people you've recently met; I somewhat collect those. People who already know me are more than welcome to ask questions too, or perhaps suggest topics you'd like me to post about!

When I was in college I did some summer volunteering helping to run a programme for disadvantaged kids. The volunteers had a couple of days of training before the kids arrived, and one of the things we did was a get-to-know-you exercise that was somewhat right-on, but has stuck with me. We had big pieces of paper and we had 30 seconds to write down which identity categories we felt strongly connected to. So if you would like to, please do play this game in comments here, 30 seconds to write down who you are!

With some trepidation, I made a long post about abortion. I was slightly expecting that people would yell at me for diverging from everything that is Right and Good, and probably defriend me for my horrible opinions. In fact, the opposite occurred. Lots of people said very sensible things and even more were complimentary! It was linked fairly widely, and far from losing friends, I actually gained several new readers on the basis of that post.

So, welcome to you all. I'm afraid not all my posts are carefully thought out essays like that. If you want to stick around, great, you're very welcome. And if you don't, no hard feelings. I welcome comments; I don't always get around to replying to them quickly. I don't automatically add everyone who friends me, but I do read everyone I have on my friends list. If I don't friend you back it'snothing personal, just the perennial problem of having too much to read and not enough time. There's very little that I friends lock anyway, so you won't miss much.

Not only is every day drama-free defriending day here, every day is also commenting on old posts amnesty day. I get notifications of old comments and I sometimes bring a discussion back to the top if it gets really interesting. I do recommend people go back and read the comments on the abortion post that inspired this, even if LJ has annoyingly collapsed threads and let the post fall off friends pages.

Anyway, it occurred to me I should probably introduce myself. So I'll do the talking about my journal meme, which I have done in the past but years ago. ( all the details )

What else? I'm very proud of the diversity of my friends list, not just geographical but in terms of age, background, opinion and so on. If you're new here you're welcome to introduce yourself, or to keep quiet and just lurk if you prefer. Oh, and if you have a topic you'd like me to write a proper thoughtful essay about, you're welcome to suggest. I will take you up if the topic grabs my attention. And that goes for people I already know as well as the newbies.

brenna26 has decided to start posting in her journal. Yay. Everyone should go and be friendly to her, cos she's a very cool person. Plus, her introductory post contains some interesting thoughts about feminism which you might enjoy.

Conversely, brenna26, let me introduce you to some of my friends. You know darcydodo, though she's not online very much recently. And I think you've met lethargic_man (we were going out when I was in Dundee, and I think he came to visit a few times). I think you'll get on with doseybat and shreena, and I generally like introducing everybody to blackherring, pseudomonas, compilerbitch and rysmiel (the last probably has the most interesting journal in terms of just reading stuff if you don't actually know the person). And I shall shut up before I overwhelm you, but yay, lots of cool people.

I am supposed to be helping organize things for the start of Passover this evening, so I'm not really online just now *cough*.

Oh look chaps, there's a new bod in the Remove. Who's game to go and rag him?