My final entry here as wanderer

I've moved on to blogspot.com just like most of the others. The closing of aol journals precipitated that move.

I would never have moved otherwise. I liked it there.

For three years I've liked journaling at aoljournals. I liked my neighbors there... I liked what I learned from everyone there... I learned about blogging, and downloading pictures, editing the same, making videos, and posting them to the internet.

I learned that a friend can be someone you have never met in person. And that sometimes, you do meet them in person, and what a special friendship that is. I can see how online dating can lead to healthy, long-term relationships.

But I wasn't there for dating... I was there for writing, and for learning. AOL Journals was a venue for teaching as well, and you let me step into that place without a question.

There is trust there. Great trust. We found encouragement there, and pats on the backs, hands given in support, words expressed in entries and comments that made a difference to both the reader and the writer.

We discovered others living in pain, with grief, with horrible memories... and we sat at our monitors sharing the happy events as well, the births, the marriages, the family reunions, and graduations. We offered comforting words when others were too sick to walk, after their surgeries, before their surgeries.

We were there for people who didn't think they had a friend in the world, and when we felt the same way, they were there for us.

Every day (well, for me it wasn't as often), we came to our computers and went straight for our email alerts, reading the long list, picking and choosing the order in which we'd read them. Sometimes the list was long, and we had to make a cup of tea or coffee before we sat there. Sometimes we quickly clicked on a particular journal because we knew what was going on in that person's life, and we were following it. Other times, we'd see a familiar name that we hadn't heard from in a long time, and we'd be happy that they were still blogging.

Once in awhile we pondered when a blog went silent. Sometimes a family member would take a person's journal over and tell us what was going on, usually bad news. Other times, we would never know what became of him. We will just never know.

That's the territory we were in.

I hope that where this move takes me is as great a neighborhood as J-Land has been. That's why I'm calling my new blog A New Bridge. I don't know where it's taking me, I don't know how difficult it will be learning a new routine of posting, but I do know that it is going to take me to new territory, yet undiscovered by me. I hope you'll join me there...

http://anewbridge.blogspot.com/

Tags: moving to blogspot, aoljournals closing