Peaches and Navel Gazing

It's the last of the summer. Yesterday I went out to Lyman Orchards in Middlefield for peaches and tomatoes. They still have plenty, but they also have their corn maze and their pumpkin patch open, so it's very clear that in a couple of weeks we will be in the full grip of fall.

The fall visits are shaping up, too. Marty's dad will be here next week, and his mom is planning to come at Thanksgiving. Maria and I need to make up our missed visit from this weekend in the next month or so, and a couple of other friends are thinking of visiting, as well. We're also planning to drive down one Saturday to Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, to visit a friend from graduate school.

And among all of that, we hope to finish the downstairs bathroom by Thanksgiving. At least finish it enough so that it can be used, that is. (Marty started tiling the walls around the shower this weekend.)

The year is fast slipping away. Still, as long as I have two quarts of fresh peaches and two pounds of ripe tomatoes in my kitchen, summer isn't completely over.

I got up way too early this morning and spent some time poking around journal-land. I kind of float at the edge of the "online journal community," meaning I read several journals but correspond with very few writers. I have written fan mail from time to time, but generally if someone writes back our e-mail exchange doesn't go past a message or two. Of course there are a couple of exceptions to this, but by and large I'm not in touch with other journal writers. That's not to say I don't have e-mail pals. I have met a lot of my close friends online -- many of whom first wrote me about Raspberry World or one of  my other sites.

But as someone who's kept an online journal for almost 4 years and a weblog for over a year (much longer if you count the Today Page), sometimes I wonder if I should make more of an effort to get involved with things like mailing lists, forums, journal rings, and JournalCon. After all, people seem to be making good friends with other journal writers, mostly, although also there seems to be some infighting and backstabbing. (To be fair, it's probably no more than you'd find in any other online community.)

I don't think about this a lot, but when I do I have somewhat mixed feelings. There's a part of me left over from childhood that feels like I should try harder to meet people. I mean, aren't we supposed to want to make friends? It probably wouldn't be that difficult. Start visiting a few forums, respond to some journal entries, and strike up some correspondence. I mean, I'm a friendly person by nature, right? I like to write e-mail. What's stopping me from making an effort here?

Oh, I dunno. Maybe it's the tone of some of the forums that puts me off, or the requirements set up by some of the journal rings. Maybe I'm afraid that people won't like my site. Or maybe I'm just a slacker. It's probably a little bit of all of these reasons.

Anyway, thinking about this made me go and read a discussion from one of Xeney's old forums (which I found cached by Google, by searching for OLJ cabal, hee!) and I realized (yet again) that this topic has been talked to death over the years. I'm not sure why I forget this and start writing about it again from time to time. It's boring!

So instead I'm going to write about some of the things I like best about keeping Raspberry World.

One thing I love about RW is that when I come here, no matter where I'm accessing it from, it feels like I'm entering my space. It's comfortable to me, like walking into my own room. Here are many of the different parts of my life, all laid out within easy reach. Music, pictures, recipes, books, thoughts -- everything is right here. And, best of all, it's prettier and better organized than any room I've ever had in my life. (I am not a particularly well-organized person.)

I also like being able to look back at the last few years and remember things I would have otherwise forgotten. Like my favorite nail polish in September, 1998, or what movies I was watching in the winter of 2000-2001. I've always had an excellent memory for minor details, but with every year that passes, I find it more and more difficult to keep them in my head. With RW, I don't have to.

And finally, I just have a really good time at RW, whether I'm working on it or just visiting. Probably a better time than anyone else who comes here, which makes sense and I think is how it probably should be. And I guess it's obvious I'm having a good time here, because other people want to play, too. Several of my friends have started their own journals and weblogs. I'm certainly not directly responsible for all of them, but at least six of my friends have started keeping their thoughts online in the last couple of years. (Actually, two of them have started new weblogs in the past two weeks!) It's great for me -- I love finding new journals to read, and it's even better when they're written by people I already know and like.

I woke up at 4 AM today from a dream about the World Trade Center attack. Dreaming about current events is very unusual for me. I guess this event made a bigger impression than most. I dreamed I was on one of the planes that hit the WTC.

It's chilly here this morning. Chilly, and time for breakfast.

This has been an anti-linear journal entry, brought to you in honor of Anti-Linear Brain, one of those cool new weblogs I was talking about.

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