My week off means posting more often, now that I have nothing better to do apart from watch tennis. And do all the other things I need to get done this week (Yuletide, Ch secret santa, baking, Rotaract stuff…).

I got to thinking last night about how people use their journals/blogs mostly because I keep coming across people who use it completely different to me.

Personally, I post everything in my blog (which is so much better to post to than the LJ/DW interface) and have a plug-in that crossposts to Livejournal and Dreamwidth, so people who want to read on those sites rather than by RSS feed can do so. On the extremely rare occasion I post something I don’t want the whole world to see (which is usually a rant about something/something specific and I don’t want them to happen upon it), then I password protect it on my blog and friends lock it on my LJ and DW. Anyone can ask for the password and if you look back in my blog carefully enough (or use the search, it’s pretty good) you can find the password.

When it comes to reading, I read everything, no matter what site it’s on, by RSS Feed. It means I don’t see LJ cuts and I can mark things as unread if I haven’t got time to read them at the moment. Or I can mark things as read without reading them if I know I’m not interested or know I’m not going to get time to read. I also don’t have to try and remember where I got to, like you do on the LJ friends page.

My LJ friends list is a copy of all the people I’m reading by RSS Feed. If I stop reading I take them off and if I start reading I add them on. I never use filters because I personally feel like that’s lying to people about whether you’re reading them or not. I sort of expect other people to do the same thing – so if they have me friended then they’re reading me, and it annoys me when they defriend me the minute I defriend them – it feels as if they’re too much of a coward to take me off their list before I do.

Dreamwidth is a bit different because on that one I allow access to everyone that has friended me on LJ but i haven’t friended back. That way they can see my friends entries, but I’m not reading their journal, and they know I’m not. I am subscribed to a few people on DW that I’m not on LJ because they’re the ones I’m occasionally interested in reading and I read my DW list on the site every few days ish. Course, that system falls down rather a lot because a lot of people have accounts at DW but aren’t posting there.

To conclude: My LJ friends list is nothing more than a reading list and the word friend is a misnomer.

So, how do you use yours?*

*I know it’s not Easter, but I haven’t had a Cadbury’s Creme Egg since 2004 and I don’t watch adverts

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