A little bummed out... in Fear & Loathing in Steel City

I created this prosebox account for several reasons.

1) I wanted to make sure this username would be saved should I want to jump over.

2) To follow friends who already jumped from Open Diary.

3) In case Open Diary (OD) ever closed their doors.

I recently read an entry that announced that option #3 is going to become a reality in less than two weeks, or around there from what we're being told.

I don't know how to respond to that. OD has been my home since June of 2000, almost fourteen years posting all my thoughts and feelings on one site. When I first started writing that diary, I was twenty-four years old and still in college, married for less than two years with no kids and a unknown future ahead of me. Now I'm thirty-eight, divorced and with two sons. An era for me is about to end for me and I'm quite shaken by it.

Part of me wants to thank Bruce (the owner of OD) for making the site and giving me a place to write and interact with others. Open Diary has been my home for almost 14 years and a world without it seems unimaginable. This is the longest journal I have ever written, over 3000 entries for the last decade and a half. So for me... it has truly been quite a ride.

Another part of me is very upset. I happen to think just shutting down the entire site is a shit move by the DM. He could have sold the site to someone willing to run it and let the site carry on. He could have given the free members two weeks to go OD plus and made it a pay only site. There are tons of options he could have done, but he chose to shut down instead. I'm also upset because I'm a paying member. Am I going to have my lifetime membership funded, Diarymaster?

A lot of questions and as usual... we will get no answers.

I have decided to post one more entry and then make a clean break and move on. I created this account as well as a blog on Wordpress as backups I had hoped would never have to be used. Part of me knew this was how it would end, I just didn't want to believe it.

So starting today, you're going to see a lot more entries here on Prosebox as I will be using this as my primary journal. I'm hoping for the best but enter a reluctant participant.

Peter