Joining The Bandwagon (Online Journal Survey) in Scottish Meanderings

What does your online diary name mean, and why did you pick it?

I feel really boring here :¬( Everyone’s coming out with all sorts of wonderful explanations as to why they picked their particular diary name and mine’s just a short form of my name and where I’m from! It was all very new to me when I started out so I thought I should keep it simple and also give some indication as to where I came from then when I jumped ship I thought I’d better keep the same name so that folk could find me but decided to drop the ‘UK’.

When did you first get an online diary?

According to my Open Diary download it was the 8th December, 2001. And here it is:

"Well here goes ...... - 12/8/2001

First entry and a ridiculous time to be writing it - it's 3.15 a.m. in the morning here and I should be in bed but I've spent so long choosing fonts, backgrounds, colours and so on that I've no energy left to write anything! I'm not that happy with what I've ended up with either but I can't be bothered trying any more so it'll have to do for now.

We've had a musical night in the C household tonight - a programme was on the telly about Top Of The Pops and it's 37 year old history and all the old groovy records were coming on making B & I very nostalgic. My hips were grinding away on the seat which was very alarming for B and when N (our 13 year old) joined us, she couldn't resist having a dance to all the golden oldies most of which of course she knew cos they've all been redone about 3 times since the originals. So she was grooving away in the middle of the sitting room and it was all too much for me - next thing I was up there with her like I was 17 again (I nearly got my handbag out and put it on the floor between us for better effect!). It felt really good to be dancing although I was very aware of the straining waistband of my jeans wondering what the hell was going on, never having been abused in this fashion before. I feel a New Year's resolution coming on .........

When the programme finished we put on some CD's just to top the night off - I had got a Linda Ronstadt one from the library in the afternoon which I've been looking for for ages or at least I've been looking for one particular track on it called 'Winter Light'. It was one of the songs from the 'Secret Garden' film soundtrack and is just beautiful.

We listened to the whole CD which led to Eva Cassidy's 'Songbird' (for no apparent reason) then one of Maura O'Connell's CDs (I forget the title now) and by that time I was the only one left still up (can't stand the pace those 2).

I enjoyed dancing so much though I'm tempted to start line dancing again - Nikki and I used to go a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it but other things took over (as they do) and we had to stop. It was good fun.

Enough for today.

And so to bed."

(And these were my first notes.)

Welcome to OD. I saw your note in Rumtumtuggers diary. I am also of a British ilk. [TheMoor] 12/24/2001 5:45:09 PM

ah the days of donny osmond and david cassidy [scottish freya] 2/1/2002 2:37:17 PM

see.... told you I was hanging around! [pink diamond] 8/25/2002 6:14:40 PM

I had completely forgotten that I used to read 'TheMoor' and when I checked I discovered he's here so perhaps I'll make him my next diary to catch up on :¬) 'pink diamond' came over here but had changed her name to 'Ceylon Sapphire' by then and 'scottish freya' changed her name to 'quine ahin a lens' - she wasn't writing for ages but when I checked just now I see she had a bit of a burst last year so I'll need to catch up. She lives in the same city I do and I've met her in person a couple of times. (By the way her diary name is Scottish for 'girl behind a lens')

Why did you first start an online diary?

I was involved with an aol site about journalling and was fascinated by how Americans were so creative with their diaries putting all sorts of craftwork into them and making them into veritable works of art. One of the girls I was chatting to there said that she'd just started an online diary at this site called 'Open Diary' and I was horrified! Why would you want to share your innermost feelings with the WORLD for Pete's sake?? THEN - another of the girls with whom I'd felt a real connection to (and whom I'd thought was quite sensible) ALSO started one! I was even more horrified! What the hell was going on?? But my curiosity was piqued so I sauntered over to this Open Diary site to see what all the fuss was about and I think it only took about 2 nights before I was creating that first entry ......

I've been driving myself mad by trying to think of that first girl's name then I had the brilliant idea of checking the notes in my OD download and there it was - 'Solitare'. I see she came over here but has only written one entry so far - however I'm pretty sure she's on my Facebook Friends although that means zilch because I hardly ever go on Facebook! Like a lot of other people she went on a very traumatic journey while she was on OD as her longstanding marriage broke up and she had to face life on her own again.

The second girl was 'Swordfish T' who became 'edna million' and is the lovely Beth whom I've had the delight to meet in person along with her best friend, Kim, when they visited the UK about 6 years ago. I'm hoping to meet up with them again and her husband this time when they all come back because they've fallen in love with England (haven't been up to Scotland yet). She's followed a similar path to me in that we both wrote copiously over on OD but seem to have been more sporadic over here.

How did you find OD/Prosebox?

What I've written above kind of answers this one as well - Prosebox was where most people seemed to be migrating to after the demise of OD so I tagged along and wasn't impressed with the site at all to begin with. I could hardly see anything properly and found it incredibly hard to figure anything out yet everyone was saying they loved the simplicity of it! I couldn't understand what was going on and it was Beth who rescued me then as well telling me to try a different browser. I downloaded Chrome and bingo! I saw what the rest of you saw :¬)

I do miss the bells and whistles of OD I have to admit - I loved mucking about with formatting on there and still have the url of the two diary cover page pictures I used to use. I also miss the folk I used to read who didn't make the leap over to here.

When writing an entry, do you believe you are writing for you or the reader?

For the reader mostly. Purely in the sense that I will explain much more in an entry I would make here or give more background info if it's needed whereas in my paper diary it's much more of a stream of consciousness type of thing.

When writing an entry, are you completely honest?

Yes. I may well **omit** certain info I don't think is relevant or that I'm not yet ready to share but that's a different thing.

Describe your writing setting:

Here it is:

..... usually in front of my desktop pc sitting in the chair I used at work for 8 years when I worked for the National Autistic Society. I had to close the office when I was made redundant and couldn't stand the thought of all that furniture going to waste so was determined to lug home anything I could (I was told to take whatever I wanted). Trouble was there was no lift and we were 6 floors up! I almost did myself an injury lugging that thing down 6 flights of (narrow) stairs and into my car.

I've written notes using my iphone or ipad but have only written one entry using my phone so far.

Is anyone that you know (in real life) allowed to read your diary?

Nope.

Do you know anyone in real life with a diary, which you are allowed to read?

There's someone I used to work with whose online diary I read although he doesn't know it. He made no secret of writing an online diary but it was another colleague who passed on the url to me.

Has anyone found your diary that you really didn’t want to find it?

Not that I know of. Although I did panic slightly when my brother told me while we were on holiday in Tenerife that one of my nieces had mentioned that I'd written about Mum after she died. To my knowledge I've never given her a link to my diary so I was slightly disconcerted about that and of course then my brother wanted to see what I'd written so I showed him how to get here but given that he can hardly remember his own name these days and is somewhat, shall we say, 'technically challenged', I'm not unduly worried about that!

Do you believe writing in your online diary is therapeutic?

Yes. Very much so. Open Diary and Prosebox have seen me through the struggles I had with Nikki when she was growing up, the start of my original voluntary counselling practice, the breakdown of my marriage, the scary time moving out to be on my own, the fun of dating again, more stress with Nikki, the joy of becoming a granny, my ongoing struggle with depression and addiction, my illness last year and much much more.

How many entries do you have?

Only 29 here so far. Loads on OD.

Do you have any entries that are private?

Yes. When I left Boyd in 2008 I wrote quite a few private entries in OD and I've written one or two here. It's quite interesting to see how much they differ from the public entries.

How many favorites do you have?

68 on here. I seem to remember on OD it reached the eighties at one point which was ridiculous because there was no way I could ever keep up with everyone. We're such a talented bunch of writers though and I find lots of people on here so interesting for all sorts of reasons!

Do you know who your first favorite was?

'Swordfish T'. Who became 'edna million'.

Have you ever written an entry while too intoxicated?

I don't think so. I may have done on OD I can't remember.

Do you feel accepted by the diary community?

Very much so.

Have you secretly fell in love (or had a crush on) a diarist?

I do remember going through a phase when I became single again of checking out the age and relationship status of any male diarists I came across lol but apart from that, no.

Have you ever read an entry that really moved you? What was it about?

Oh yes - quite a few. Sometimes someone will write something which will express something I've been trying to find the words for for ages or something which will connect in some very deep way with me. Or something will be written so beautifully that I'll find myself welling up. The last one was an entry by 'JoyfulRebellion' when she wrote movingly of having to say goodbye to her dog, Bailey. It was so similar to Trooper's passing and brought back all that sadness instantly that I was in bits by the time I'd finished reading!

Has anyone written an entry that made you cry?

See above.

What are your favorite kinds of entries to read?

Anything that's well written or that I can relate to in some way.

After writing an entry, how long do you wait to see if you have comments?

This is interesting because normally I check comments via the comments thingy but when I've just written an entry I like to go on to the entry itself and see the comments that way. I don't know why that is but somehow it just seems more personal that way!

If you don’t have comments, do you feel let down?

Well I would yes but I'm lucky enough not to have ever been in that position :¬)

How many comments do you usually get?

At the moment because I'm only writing on average once a month, there are usually quite a few - often several private ones depending on the subject matter of the entry but if I was writing every day that would naturally diminish.

Did you know the more comments you leave, the more notes you get?

That's not necessarily true but in any case I never leave comments to get notes. I leave them because I'm inspired to say something in connection to whatever someone has had to say.

Do you delete mean or nasty comments?

I've luckily never had one. Perhaps I've never been controversial enough haha.

Have you ever left a nasty comment and not signed your name?

Nope. Don't see the point.

Have you ever left a comment on a person’s diary just to make them feel better?

Well that's still a genuine comment isn't it? There are all sorts of reasons why we comment on something - I don't see anything wrong with that as long as you're not lying about what you're saying.

Do you keep a paper copy of your online diary?

Yes. And what was quite spooky was that around 9 months before OD sunk for good I decided to print out every entry I had on there, notes an' all, when I was going through a quiet spell at work. My boss was on holiday for 2 weeks and it was really because I had paper diaries right up until around 2002 from 1972 so I wanted to have something consistent in paper form and not have a gap anywhere. Obviously it was going to cost quite a bit in ink and paper but we had just bought some extra stationery to use up money in that year's budget because we weren't allowed to carry it forward so I decided to make good use of that!

Do you go back and re-read your past entries?

I used to do that sometimes in OD but haven't here unless I want to check something I can't remember, see if I've already explained something or need to check what I've written so that I don't repeat myself.

What’s the most interesting thing you can think of about OpenDiary/PB?

Just how diverse we all are yet how similar we all are underneath everything.

---

Last updated January 09, 2018