My third daylog ever. Third time's the charm. This time I am
not going to
rant about anything. I am
not going to lose my temper. I will
not yell and scream. I will
not throw things at the monitor this time. I will
not do an evil, hateful, bile-filled core dump of my negative emotions into this little white box on my screen. I will be good, all sweetness and light.
I know I should not node about noding, but I have been thinking a lot about noding, and about E2, and since this is my daylog, I wanted to write out some of the things that have been going through my mind about this place. If I am still around here a year from now, I'm sure I will have a much different and wiser perspective on this place than I do now. It might be cool to look back and see how I was thinking when I was still trying to become oriented.
I realized today that I could probably spend every waking moment reading and voting on E2, day in and day out, and it would take months and months, maybe years, before I got around to reading all the good stuff. Even if I spent the time to read 10 days worth of old daylogs every day, how long would it take to read them all? The more I read, the more stuff would be added, so I might never catch up. So many ideas, so little time. I wonder why books don't do the same thing for me. Everything is a living novel. I can hear it breathing, and feel the beat of its heart. Sometimes I can almost hear the sound of its many, many voices. It excites me, and frightens me. It makes me want more.
I think the best thing about writing a really good node is the response you get from other noders that like it. I don't mean upvotes or C!s, though those are very cool. I like the /msgs best. I have found some really cool writeups just because someone said "Thanks" or "Hi, nice work", and I went to their home node to find out about them. And when I see the kinds of things that they write, it makes me want to write better. It makes me want to spend my votes wisely, and reward those who are trying hard like me, and those who really nailed it. I like it best when I find a noder who doesn't have very many writeups, but almost all of them are Ching!ed. They are special because they "got it" right after they walked in the door, and weren't distracted by all the noise like I was. Along with the gods and editors, they help form the bedrock that keep this place from turning into a bathroom stall in a frat house.
I don't like downvotes. I don't give them out except to newbies who come here and fire off some garbage without even knowing where they are. It's like somebody breaking into your home and spray painting graffiti on your walls. A downvote should be reserved as a rap on the head to say "You're fucking up, you should know better! Learn why this is wrong or get out of our house!" I think downvotes are abused for a lot of reasons. But I wouldn't get rid of them, because just like IRL, people have an equal potential to do good or evil. You have to give them the choice.
Time seems to move slowly here, and I don't mean the nefarious lag. It just seems like I'm here every day now and I'm not finding out about this place fast enough. The more I see, the more I want to see, and the suspense is killing me! I check on other noders that joined about the same time as me, and compare their progress and their nodes to mine. Some of them are prolific writers and are burning a path to godhead, and some have wandered off and probably won't return. And I suspect that a lot are just like me, still trying to get my bearings and regain that writer's ability that I had when I was in school. They say that if you don't use it, you lose it - it's true for most things. Being able to write is like being able to think. If you stop doing it for a long time, you kind of forget how it's done. But the more you practice, the more you remember.
And the lights are coming back on.
_________________________
My potted poinsettia that I bought before Christmas is still hanging on. I keep watering it a few times a week, and it keeps blooming and getting new leaves. I open the blinds in the morning so it gets some direct sunlight in the afternoon before I get home from work. My mom said her poinsettia was dead by the second week in January. I wonder what I'm doing right. Maybe I just didn't give up.