the trick is to keep breathing

I use both LJ and DW. I like DW's interface, love their tagging system, am now addicted to being able to expand cut tags while reading my Circle rather than having to open them all in new tabs, and generally find it way faster, less laggy, and MUCH less intrusive and in-my-face than LJ.

However, I have things on LJ that are important to me - writing, archives, community, fic, and more importantly, friends: history, interactions - and while I've cut down on what I pay LJ for, I don't plan to leave all of that.

I use this system via crossposting: I post to DW, and DW crossposts to LJ, and it's the same thing in both places. This semester I've been too busy to really stay up on comments at ALL, but when I do have the time, I reply to both in both places. I keep up with both feeds (FList/Circle), although again, this semester I have probably missed some of the amazing details about your ravishing life (sorry!). It works really well for me, mainly because all of my posting-related transactions are through the (in my opinion) superior DW, but I'm not leaving LJ or any of my LJ acquaintances behind.

I'm mentioning this because LJ has been pretty much abysmal this week and last week, and while I understand their struggles and actually am impressed with their response, I am not sure it bodes well for usability future on LJ. I know other people are frustrated, too. But I also think a lot of people look at Dreamwidth like, "oh gosh, how could I abandon LJ? I can't, my friends/fandom/fic is/are here." Well, while on one hand it isn't really fair to abuse Dreamwidth's amazing setup to continue to use LJ while LJ is in a state of fail, because DW provides such awesome services - on the other hand, DW is set up to be inclusive, an AND rather than an OR, in that it'll import your old journals and tags and icons and allow you to crosspost and all kind of lovely things. And if you like the account enough, the paid accounts are even nicer.

Case in point: I've been on DW for over a year now, and I doubt anyone on LJ has noticed anything different (other than, you know, the recent distinct lack of comments which is really the fault of lab/grad school rather than LJ, DW, or any other combination of capital letters other than S-U-C-K).

So!

If you're looking to transition to DW, comment or email me, because I have some invite codes I can share!

If you just made a DW and want to be friends, on DW I am seventhe. Please friend me! I have nice icons over there, about cats.