Friday, July 24, 2009

Welcome

Welcome all to the new home of BethanyC. I expect to write much more often. Below, is the entry I placed on my former blog site earlier this evening. Thank you for dropping in, I've been looking forward to company.

My early blogging life was spent in a charming little corner of the blog world by the name of Journalspace. There, I was simply BethanyC and for almost five years bethanyc.journalspace was a home almost as real as my actual physical home, a created community that led to offline friendships and a view into lives all over the globe.

It is a given to say that blogging changed my life as I met my significant other in the halls of journalspace. He quickly charmed me with his stories and humor and the rest as they say is history. All of us at JS suffered site slow downs, fairly frequent outages, and loss of data. In fact, about year four I lost the entire content of my journal of four years. Yet, most of us hung in there because after all this was home. Then, a few months after my journal was one of a very few wiped clean the entire site crashed and burned taking most of the words with it.

With a Do Not Resuscitate Order out on the Journalspace site, loyal JS'ers were left in a bit of daze, scrambling for purchase and looking for new online homes. This led to the great Journalspace Diaspora of 2008. I ended up here and I've disliked it ever since.

No, it's not that I dislike Blogger and it's not even that the sense of community is most definitively in short supply. The real problem with this blog, and the reason I've yet to really create a solid blog bond is simply the name.

In the aftermath of the JS crash, December 2008, I was sitting in a house with three other dispaced JS'ers. The Finman was here, brother Chaing Mai Guy was visiting from Thailand, and big sis ElisaC was also staying for the holidays. None of us knew quite where to go and I personally scrambled for a blog name. When my first choice was taken and then my second, I'll admit I got a bit crazed and ended up with a title and consequently a url that was absolutely unmanageable.

Seriously, it is ridiculous to try to direct people to your blog when your url is long enough to extend from your wrist to your elbow. I mean wherethewindblows-girlblogger. Blech! What was I thinking?

Now I'm taking things in hand. I'm moving alltogether and hopefully this will be my last blog move for a while. You may now find me at http://bethanyillustrated.blogspot.com where I plan to be much more prolific and drag my blogging muse from the attic whence she's been cowering for the past several months in apparent distaste of my poorly chosen words.

Post Script: A note for my JS friends. I do know that many of you are now at Keep Connected Live and it looks like a great site. I may create an account over there to help me keep up with all you folks. However, for now I'm staying with blogspot and hope you will all fit me into your busy blog reading schedules even though I haven't made the KCL jump.

10 comments:

  1. Bethany, I shall put you on my blogroll and visist often. Glad you have found a new home. It looks lovely!

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  2. Beautiful and witty job my darling. I linked it on my spot at kcl so that all (both) of my readers will know.

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  3. Carla, thanks for stopping by!

    Fin, thank you. And, thanks for the blog pimp. :)

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  4. I've added you to my links on simplywizardress.com and I'll be doing the same with the other two as well.

    I love the color and the layout. *hugs*

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  5. Thanks Wiz. Just realized that the default for comments on blogger to allow registered users only to comment. I'm glad you still have a blogger account.

    For anyone that tried to comment earlier I apologize and have now opened comments to everyone.

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  6. Heya Bethany! Just discovered your new online home via Wiz's bloglist. :)

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  7. Hey Tea, so glad you came by! Definitely glad you're keeping up with my moves.

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  8. I also landed on Blogspot, and over time, was quite content to just - stay here. But continued ploddings from various people got me over there - to KCL land. I still write on my Blogspot site, but much more infrequently - I am now focusing most of my writing at KCL.
    I would like to hope that, as I continue to warm up to KCL, especially considering many of the people I knew from JS are there - that I won't have to experience what I did at JS. I've gotten over the loss of my entire 4 years worth of script - getting over the sense of "home" was and is completely different.
    I would like to hope that if the owners of KCL ever decide to get out of it, they won't just delete everything and that will be the end of that, but - instead - hand it over, sell it over - whatever it over - to someone or some entity that will continue to nurture it.
    I still like Blogspot - sort of a never-never land since I seem to be writing to basically nobody as it isn't apparently read that much, yet, I never really intended on having the most popular blog on earth, anyway, it is more of a release for me than anything.
    I like the layout here, the nice - cool but not too cold - blue and the main pic, you've done a good job yet again.
    I would particularly like to hear more about what you folks are doing, since Fin - no offense buddy - doesn't write too terribly much anymore and I miss seeing what's going on with you 2.
    ben

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  9. I like Bethany Illustrated. It has a nice ring to it. Good to see you in a new home!

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  10. Thanks Ben. I know what you mean about Fin's writing. Maybe he'll get the bug again soon. In the meantime I'll definitely try to keep you all in the loop.

    Joan, so glad you stopped by. Thanks.

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Please play nicely.