Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Nightmare on AOL Street

I woke up a little while ago almost worn out from the dream I was having. It was one of my three reoccurring nightmares. The theme to this one is I am back at school because I have failed to complete all the credits required to graduate. It is usually college where I wander around some unfamiliar campus looking for some obscure building that I have never seen before!

This time I was a rotten teenager. Or rather I was 20 years old. I know this because as I slipped on my ten ton back pack, my half ton purse loaded with all my essentials, my lunch which was a sandwich crammed into a tiny plastic Tupperware thing and the top didn't fit and my sandwich got wet because it was raining I calculated how I was too old for this....at 20. I decided to skip school and was farting around looking for the text books thinking that "Dad" would leave to go to work and I would be home free. Only Dad was Gabriel Byrne (wow!) and was on to my tricks, reluctantly I struggled into that damn back pack when this witch arrives on the scene and says she is Gabriel's fiance and that erupts into a shouting match of some magnitude. Then I wake up and go "Wow!" and I was exhausted.

This is one of those many times when I really miss Joe (who is on assignment). He always listens patiently to my rambles about the dream and inevitably the questions, "What do you think it means?" or "What do you think about that?" and the usual one, "What brought that on?"

I suppose I was just unsettled because of the forced evacuation of AOL Journals. Yesterday I began to back up my journal by engaging in the laborious task of copying and pasting into Microsoft Word. In a way it was soothing to revisit many of those entries. Some I had sought out, like the one about the Jesuit who told about the possessions of people and places, but most were tiny gems of the necklace of my AOL Journal. I was prolific at the beginning and I breath a sigh of relief knowing that I slowed down in time!

I am lucky because I have been blogging on both AOL and Blogger since the beginning, so the majority of my entries are also parked in that journal, which has assumed many names. The beauty of Blogger, you can change your name!!

And as many of my AOL friends will find out, Blogger is a safe haven. And as they become more comfortable they will marvel at the tools available to them to continue the community outside the confines of AOL.

Among the nany advantage, your counters will always work!! You can manipulate your pictures to insert them into different areas of your text. You can write an entry and save it rather than publish it right away. You can link up to Flickr and Slideshow and a multitude of other fun stuff that was unavailable on AOL. You can take on advertising yourself and reap the benefits rather than AOL using us and our journals for gain.

The list goes on and on, but I have not had my coffee yet.


 

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Please make sure to share the blogger link so we can find you over there.

Anonymous said...

WOW and I haven't had my vodka yet.  Some dream!   Anne

Nettie said...

Hey there, thanks for finding me! Strange them getting rid of aol journals....I do like blogger, but admit that I don't blog often. As for professional blog you asked about, I have a website. www.jerseygirlphotos.com If I have more time, will try to add more photos on blogger too.

Dawn Allynn said...

I have been away from AOL for awhile now, and hadn't realized they were closing that section down until I stumbled across some rants a few days ago. Brought back a lot of memories about why I left AOL in the first place, which was so hard to do. Life goes on, you are right, but it's hard to leave what you're accustomed to.

It's nice to know someone else has such convoluted and active dreams. Sometimes I feel like I cold write a book once I have woken up... :)

Dot said...

Hi! i'm so glad the postcard arrived safely :)

So nice to meet you!

marti said...

I am still very tentative here...I see lsots of pretty blogs but dont' know how to work it all yet....glad I found you!
Marti

distimpson said...

hello alpha, read you rxs in the kansas country living, yummm! new to the blogging, facebooking, myspacing, great stuff, thank you! all for now, Don

blondepennie said...

It is so nice to be able to read you again. I know so little about what I am doing here on blogspot that it feels like a gift when someone that I have been trying to find finds me first. Maybe someday I will become proficient, but at the moment I feel totally inefficient. As an example this is the second time that I have tried to leave you a comment. It's nice to be in the neighborhood with you. Now that I have your address I will have to learn how to knock on the door. Pennie

Theresa Williams said...

Haven't had contact with you in about a thousand years. :-)

V said...

I love that dream... two real common themes;

The theme to this one is I am back at school because I have failed to complete all the credits required to graduate.

Only Dad was Gabriel Byrne (wow!) and was on to my tricks, reluctantly I struggled into that damn back pack when this witch arrives on the scene and says she is Gabriel's fiance and that erupts into a shouting match of some magnitude.

These are really universal themes but you`re right, are no doubt related to AOL.

Hugs,
V