Because 4,388 is a perfectly good number

[captainsblog]

Nine years ago today, I began blogging on LiveJournal.  It's since become an important part of my life, and Eleanor's, as our circles of friends have expanded, crossed and even crossed over into real life on many occasions.  In past years, I managed to time entries so this anniversary was also numerically significant. 

This year, you get the 4,388th. You're not likely to see 5,000, and maybe not even 4,400.  This week's tragic events have hit me that badly, to the point of wondering if I even want to continue this effort anymore.

What's the point of doing what you love if there's somebody out there determined to take it away from you?

----

Not quite a year ago, I began training for my first-ever real race. I'm miles from marathoning, even from coming close to half that, but I took pride in going, almost literally, from couch to 5K in little more than a month- and then, in Boston less than two months later, doing it again.

Certainly I'd seen similar events- major ones televised, local ones passing through our parks and road shoulders- but I'd never experienced the camaraderie , the community, the closeness of people of all ages and abilities making common cause. These races had winners, maybe even trophies and prizes at the top, but there were no losers. Fans of the elite finishers weren't at the finish line making fun of the old farts doing it just to beat their own prior time. No, there were cups and cowbells for them, too- which I learned when I became one of them, three times now, the third just short of five miles on Thanksgiving morning.

My niece, instrumental in inspiring me into this, has run far more in number and in distance.  Her husband ran Boston on Monday, finishing long before It Happened, but she and their three-year-old son were in the area, as well, and any or all of them could have been in mortal danger under slightly different circumstances.  Now, she tells me, she doesn't even want to run anymore.  The memories are too vivid, the fear too big to face.  The Bad Guy, be he foreign or domestic, isn't likely to strike a community 5K on a random Sunday, but who expected him at this week's finish line?

I won't give that up so readily.  A friend has spontaneously organized a solidarity event in Buffalo's Delaware Park for this Sunday morning- any distance, any ability- and I plan to run, or at least stagger, through a portion of it.  The Boston 5K I did last August  has been moved to September; their site and Facebook page are silent on this week's events, and I've been similarly quiet about whether I will return for that one.  For various reasons, I suspect I will do it, but only if, unlike last year, I am doing it in the company of person or persons who I know.

----

My writing effort, on the other hand, is the bigger casualty of this week.  For we've seen in so many ways just how easy it is for this to be taken away from us.  Apparently hackers are behind a major effort to use a hole in Wordpress blogging serverware to zombify more and more of the Internet to deny service, slow traffic and generally be shits.  We saw so many times last year how vulnerable LiveJournal is to such efforts.  While it's fun to see such skills used for a greater good- as Westboro Baptist found out when Anonymous hacked their Facebook pages in retaliation for their protesting of the marathoners' funerals- it just serves as a sad reminder of how fleeting this all is- and how easily it can all be taken away.

Most of the time lately, I feel like I'm just talking to myself here.  Comments are down to a trickle, so many of my most reliable correspondents have faded (or more likely, Twittered) away, and I fear turning into Get Off My Lawn Guy with nothing but complaints about technology, work and refinancing mortgages.

Speaking of work, I've got to get back to it. No, I'm not going to write about it.  We'll see how much is left to write about.

Comments

[uninvitedcat]

I must raise my hand guiltily here - I read my flist (both here and on LJ) every day, but I find I rarely comment. One of my undertakings this year is to do better...

[glenmarshall.livejournal.com]

Speaking of mortgage refi... It sucks ass, even when the bank wants to help.

A year ago I initiated a refi with my mortgage bank (BB&T). I filled-out the forms on-line using past data plus estimates for my pending retirement, paid for the requisite credit report, and waited. In came a FedEx package asking for independent proof of my estimates, which did not exist since I had not retired yet. This after my web forms included an explanation that some amounts were estimates. When people don't read what I write, I do not respond. So I let it lapse.

In January I got a phone offer form BB&T for a refi. The department that called was the wealth management group. I guess I've got enough for them to be interested in my business. They went around a few times and came to understand that they were in the wrong department and could not drive the refi, sending me back to the pool of the Great Unwashed and pissing me off 'cause (in my book) an organization chart should never stand in the way of customer service. I stopped talking to them.

Then I got a letter late last week offering to do a reduced-fee refi (no appraisal required). So I initiated the process. The first thing I had to do was e-sign some stuff, read some disclosures, and ink-sign & mail some other stuff. And they asked me to pay north of $400 for an appraisal. I pushed back on that, and the person I'm working with said to disregard it. So much for automated systems. Today I snail-mailed the ink-signed forms and expect the next wave to be nausea, so I can be delighted if it isn't.

Hmmm... I'm gonna turn this replyh into an LJ post.

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

Saw that. There's some comfort that we're not alone in being driven crazy by these idiots.

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

*nod*

It's hard to know what to do about the ol' LJ. I read it faithfully, but I only post a couple of times a year now. I'm not that much better at my own blog, and I know the readership of that is miniscule.

Sometimes I feel communicationed out.

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

I do have your other blog RSS'd, and enjoy it as much as anything here, but yeah. It gets harder to keep the continuity.

Glad we found you and we'll find ways to keep you found:)

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

It is good that we found one another.

[platypus]

I read faithfully, though I'm often quiet. LJ's an entirely different thing from twitter and facebook and whatnot, and I would miss it terribly if it were gone, and you if you were to stop writing.

[thediva-laments.livejournal.com]

I agree with this.

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

Thanks, mluv. You're both terribly important to us.

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

Thank you:) I FB also, as you know, but that's more for bursts. This is where thoughts go to think:)

[nentikobe.livejournal.com]

Agreeing with this too. I am so bad at my livejournal these days - I think it's because I have to be real in it, not just quick and surfacey. But I love that you're out there and writing. You're like my morning paper - in the wonderful familiarity comforting way it's portrayed.

[audacian.livejournal.com]

I'm reading! Just not commenting all the time. I'm bad on twitter, too. :P

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

How can you go wrong in under 140 characters?

(I wouldn't know. I still haven't taken that plunge yet.)

Thanks, though. You guys mean a lot to us:)

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

I read regularly. I would miss your posts were they gone.

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

Thanks, man. You've been with this journal since near the beginning and I never fail to smile, think or both when I see anything with those hands on it.

[thanatos-kalos.livejournal.com]

I read all the time, even when I don't comment. ::hugs:: I'd miss you!

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'll always turn up someplace. Maybe even in a torpedo tube;)

::hugs back::

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I post short things to my facebook, but anything over a paragraph goes on my LJ, because FB just plain doesn't work for long stuff.

Also, anything I'd possibly want to refer to later, since FB doesn't allow you to see your old stuff.

Also, anything which I want friendslocked, since FB doesn't manage privacy well.

I would much rather have everything stay here, since it works better for how I do things -- but my family's all on FB.

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

I roll pretty much the same- FB used to have a 400-ish character limit and I just trained myself to save the longer stuff for here. I lock very little here, but limit everything there to friends because, you know, Mark's a Dickerberg.

[mikailborg.livejournal.com]

"What's the point of doing what you love if there's somebody out there determined to take it away from you?"

To spite them. To make them work for everything they try to take from you, to make them curse your name.

Okay, perhaps it's not the most positive of reasons, but some days it's what keeps me going.

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

That's as good an attitude as I can come up with, so I salute you for it:)

[siercia]

I read daily, even if I rarely have the thoughts to string together to leave a comment. I would be sad if you sailed off for other shores.

I share your feelings of deep sadness and despair at the events of the week, this has been a tough one to weather, particularly as we have friends that knew the family of the little boy who was killed well. It's hard to just keep going along.

[greenquotebook.livejournal.com]

I was in NYC on 9/11 and experienced much the same "what's the point of it all" reaction that you're having. The answer took a while to find, but I eventually did find it. It is this: because you are here, life is what you make of it, don't let the bastards get you down.

I think that the key is not to let it make you feel impotent. I wasn't able to do much after 9/11, but taking a big stack of donated food, clothing, and supplies to Shea Stadium a few days later, loading trucks, being a communication hub between friends who were looking for updates... little things really do make a huge difference and help you feel less victimized.

It took a long, long time for me to be able to think, let alone talk, about 9/11. But the day came. I've been back to NYC. I addressed my son's class on the 10th anniversary of the attacks. With time and distance comes closure. You will get there, I promise.

I am still reading, though this past two weeks I've been bad at commenting because of all our travel. We have no plans to go anywhere for a while, so consider me back. :) I would miss your posts, that much I know.

The refinancing process sucks, but I can say with all confidence that it is worth it. We refinanced about, gosh, two years ago - maybe a little less than that - and it made a HUGE difference in our finances. Stick with it. I can say from first hand experience that it is worth it all in the end.