Sometimes things just don't work out

I was with AOL for more than 10 years. I even had CompuServe for a few years before that, and before that I was a 300-baud modem freak before any of these dang Internet-ready kids knew their diaper from an ethernet cable. (Oh there was no ethernet back then, either.)

I was also with my ex for more than 10 years, and that didn't work out, either. Slowly but surely, we sort of drifted apart into a kind of empty closeness where you share a bathroom and a blanket, but not much else. Sometimes things just don't work out; 'for better or for worse' becomes 'whatever.' But inertia has you by the toes, and until there's a real reason to move out of the house, it's easier to just keep your stuff where it is.

Then one winter the first snow comes in October, and the last in mid-May, and you think to yourself, "Exactly why is it that am I still in upstate NY?"

AOL started out like a great match. They had a service I needed, a good match for my needs and abilities at the time. My needs changed, but inertia (and my e-mail address) held me there until...

Well, they put an ad on my journal. I pay $xx per month to have an account there to read mail and write a journal. That's really all I have been using on AOL for several years now. I used to participate in some forums, read news, watch video clips, chat a bit, had a website, etc. But mostly now I have found better places to do those things. So I had e-mail and a journal. And they put an ad on my journal.

It's been in the back of my mind to drop AOL since I left New York, but I had the journal and oh it's such a pain to change my e-mail address, etc. Inertia. An ad banner is not that big a thing, but it was just enough to push me off the edge I've been dangling over for some time.

So here I am.

It's ok to wave back because I know that at least some of my AOL-journaling pals are out here in non-AOL journalingland. I know this because Patrick has a list of us, those who have managed to break the inertia. If you're an old AOL friend who has joined what Patrick calls The Great Exodus, be sure you get on the list.

Because somehow, even though I'm just leaving an ISP, I feel like I'm also leaving a community. A community that has been ravaged in the same way that Katrina demolished New Orleans, but a community that I will hate to lose.