The more I think about doing another study of Open Diary/Prosebox the more I realise I have to do it. I feel like it's a unique community we had (and still have, I hope!) that deserves to have what little highlight it can get from academic publishing. Maybe, if I write about it, other people will chime in and tell stories of other places like this on the web. Maybe it will inspire more people to engage in this sort of meaningful writing online, or in developing websites that enable these sorts of connections. But that's the thing that drives me - the connections between people. Open Diary massively enriched my lives and the lives of everyone I've talked to about it, and I want to do my part in giving more people the chance to experience such connections. There are so many lonely people on this planet. We all need human connection.
But enough with the emotional stuff! Academically speaking, I've learned a huge amount in just the past couple of months. I began teaching at university for the first time and it's been all kinds of fabulous. It's actually through this course I'm teaching with a fellow doctoral candidate that I learned about autoethnography. And realised that that's what I need to do here. Well, a form of autoethnography anyway. This case does not benefit from quantitative, statistical methods (not that I've ever had an affinity for that type of research anyway). No, this case is about stories. About my story and all of your stories. Somehow I want to find a way to start putting all of our stories together.
I'm not sure what the best way would be to proceed. I think one thing I'd like to do is to get people telling the stories of their move from OD to PB. What life was like on OD, how they dealt with the problems and shutdown, and what life is like now on PB. You could write entries about it, but I think a lot of people already have written entries on both sides of the divide. If you see this post, let me know: do you have that story written out, or would you like to write it? Would you let me see it and use it for my research project? Are there other things you could tell me or show me that would help me understand how you've experienced it all?
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