Here for the ride in The Book of Public Entries

I wrote in Open Diary for pretty close to fifteen years before it was gone. Apparently I’m still a little traumatized. This morning when I woke up and found good ol’ PB not working, I felt a little sick.

I should have had more faith in Simple Mind than that. It’s not a nice feeling to hear him making noises about not wanting to maintain the site anymore (more or less) and then to have the site go down for a while, but sites like this tend to go from being cute little pet projects to ginormous, demanding beasts that gobble up way more time and money than one person should have to provide.

As I said to Simple Mind: no one really expects that little packet of seeds to turn into a giant beanstalk. ;)

I’m certainly curious to see what happens next. I think paid subscriptions are a bad idea because it would saddle Simple Mind with far too much responsibility - he doesn’t want this site to turn into a job and I don’t blame him one bit. When I checked groceries the Deli Manager at my grocery store gave me a line that resonated so true with me that I will never forget it. Picture a surprisingly tall, rail thin Chinese man who shaved all but a small round patch at the top of his head and dyed the little tuft of hair that he kept on top Woodstock yellow. Now imagine him after chugging six cans of Red Bull, one immediately after the other. That’s Albert the Deli Manager. One day after a customer decided to be shitty because she thought that Albert sliced her deli ham too thin, he waited until the customers were all gone, saw my sympathetic look, waved one flippant hand in the air and said, in his Chinese accent,

“Whatever!!! People spend two dollar here and they think they own you!”

He rolled his eyes for emphasis. If that doesn’t embody customer service today, I don’t know what does. People spend money somewhere, anywhere, and their sense of entitlement goes through the fucking ceiling.

That’s why paid subscriptions around here are a very bad idea for our friend Simple Mind. :)

A Donate button is a great idea: that way if PB ever does come to an end people won’t be pissed off about giving the site money the way people were angry with Bruce (although I personally feel that Simple Mind is handling things far better than Bruce did).

I think keeping some perspective on this site is a good idea, too. It’s completely free, it’s jam packed with people who write huge multiple entries per day and it’s remarkably user friendly. It takes a lot of time and money to run a site like this, and we get to use it for free.

That’s what I told myself early this morning when the site was down and I found myself feeling angry. My own sense of entitlement set in, and when one of my friends text me about the site being down with the thought that maybe Simple Mind pulled the plug, my immediate response was:

He better not have! That’d be despicable, doing so without warning.

Pretty rotten, huh?

Yes. I think so.

So, I think I’ll just back up my diary here, kick back and see what happens. My experience with Open Diary taught me that most websites won’t last forever, no matter how badly we want them to. I know Prose Box isn’t going anywhere yet, though, so I’m going to just enjoy it while it lasts.

Special thanks to Simple Mind for giving me a soft place to land when Open Diary shut down. I can’t fully comprehend how much time and money goes into a site like this, but I do understand that it’s not always easy and it’s not always cost free. So, thank you for everything.

Last updated December 31, 2014