Like Donuts

A dozen.
I came by OD today and read the DiaryMaster’s entry about the current situation of the site and himself. It always terrifies me to think about how impermanent things are, and the thought of this site going away is genuinely horrifying. Scanning the notes on his entry, I noticed a theme running through the comments about how long people have been here and how much they love the site. It made me pop to my own diary and check exactly how long I’ve been here.
It turns out that today is my twelfth anniversary on OpenDiary. It’s sad, because I used to remember that date and make sure to write something in celebration, and I hadn’t remembered. To be honest, I didn’t actually know what day it was today until I checked.
But it’s been twelve years that I’ve spent here, and I value the writing that I’ve done and the community that I’ve found more than almost anything else in my life. It doesn’t seem like it, I’m sure, given that I write so little these days. But the record is priceless. I can’t remember how many times I’ve talked to someone, reminiscing about the past, and mentioned that I can pin down exact dates for various events because I wrote them here. I still make a point to come and write down a little something whenever an important event happens, simply so that I can reference it later. I am a terribly nostalgic man, and being able to save such things is important to me. Despite, or perhaps because of the fact that it makes me cringe sometimes to read old entries. It wouldn’t affect me if there weren’t truth there, embarrassing as it may be.
I was talking Sunday of some of the people that I’ve met here and have since lost touch with, and I wish that I had some way of contacting them. It seems almost foreshadowing now, that discussion and the events of today.
In any case, today I mark a dozen years on OD.