Today was a turning point in my life's debacle at the moment.  For the first time in a long while, I was able to voice out my thoughts, feelings, issues and concerns without fear of reprisal, and without need for contempt.  While things may not be for the better at the moment, I truly and firmly believe they have come a step closer.

The Lady had asked me for time apart.  Yes, it's that kind of breakup.  After ages of what seemed to be endless soul-searching, I now know what contributed to such a good thing being compromised and deeply damaged.  I admit that such an effort had gone through such a hard road, but I am grateful.

Even more grateful, as The Lady had done the same as I have.  Today. Here. With Me.  We did not just talk.  We truly communicated.  It was something that we put on the back burner primarily because we thought that open communication leads to arguments, which in turn leads to a weaker foundation in the relationship.  Boy, we thought wrong.

We did have our share of ups and downs.  Good times and bad. But the arguments were hollow because of the fear behind them.. thus we paid the price and are now put in this situation.  Yet today seemed to put a stop to all that.  I can only hope that we never forget the lesson that we learned today and resolve to keep going, in order for us to heal.


My Lady: it hurt me to hear that our exchanges of late were only done out of pity.  Do not worry, it no longer concerns me.  I only hope that the guilt it may have caused you in saying that be cleared away by my words of reassurance and forgiveness, and that now you may feel at ease.

I also want you to know that you are not entirely wrong.  I have indeed been selfish of late regarding my actions.  But know that I did so because I long to see the side of you that I have not seen in a while:  the side that a true friend shows.  After all, love can be both selfish and giving.. and I wanted nothing more than to share it with you.  I apologize profusely if it seemed that I have made you uncomfortable through it all.  I never wanted such things.  Please forgive me.

Today has made me understand more why we must do what we must.  Today, our minds have become closer in tune.  And, even if it is too early to tell, I hope that our hearts will be in tune as well.  I also hope that today has made it easier for you and I to bear the burden we must carry.  Perhaps one day we will learn not only to carry our crosses properly, but to properly carry each other's as well.  You're right.. this is a twist of fate.  One that I pray teaches us the right lessons, heals our hearts and brings us closer to the truth only they know.

Goodnight, my Lady.

It's been a momentous 12 months here at LiveJournal. We crossed a capital T at Ten years young. And, like most precocious pubescents, we celebrated turning double digits by publishing our first book! Needless to say, we've experienced some major changes, both inside and out. Before we recap, we'd like to thank you for bearing with us as we've struggled through ungainly growth spurts, identity pangs, and, yes, the occasional blemish. We hope you'll continue to stand by us: We're gaining wisdom with maturity.

Stuff you liked

• Back in February, we placed a call for entries for our ten-year anniversary anthology in lj_turns10. In December (less than a year later!), we officially announced the publication of Live Journal: The First Decade. Featuring an inspired collection of writing, photographs, and artwork from the pages of LiveJournal history, the book has been selected by Blurb.com as a top staff pick! We are proud to have played host to so much talent over the years, and we thank our contributors for sharing their extraordinary work.
• We all love quirky surprises, but not when it comes to managing our account settings. This year we streamlined settings into one central account management area. No more sifting through FAQs to figure out how to control privacy settings, modify notifications, adjust mobile settings, or update contact information!
• Being users ourselves, we realize our own mothers couldn't find us on LiveJournal based on our usernames and userpics alone (*heaves heavy sigh of relief*). But since there are times when we actually want to be found, we created a search tool--Find Your Friends--to help locate people by email address (it's in the Friends drop-down menu).
• Spam counter-attack: The war against vicious malware and spambots reigns eternal, but we've been making serious inroads to ensure your online security. We've established new protocols, such as requiring email address validations. We've grown more savvy about ferreting out suspicious behavior. We've added features, like whitelisting, to help you protect your communities. Our valiant (i.e., overworked) spam avengers (a/k/a the LiveJournal ops team) are standing on red alert so you can sleep safely at night.
• After an intensive beta, we launched My Guests at the end of the year, which lets you see who's been hanging around your journal. A number of you have even discovered secret admirers (not all of whom are creepy)!
• Last, but by no means least, we want to thank our volunteers for providing invaluable support and feedback. Their Herculean efforts enable us to answer your questions more efficiently, identify spammers, reduce abuse, and deliver better features (through tireless testing). On behalf of the staff and the larger LiveJournal community, we are truly grateful for their diligence, intelligence, loyalty, and passion.

You got your fix

• We recently debugged a number of the oustanding issues with the rich text editor so your entries look great regardless of whether you know html. You can read more about text editors here.
• In response to user demand, we brought back international voice posting. Please note that this still needs more tweaking, and we are working on the one-minute cut-off issue. For more info on voice posting, read here.
• At long last, we revived TxtLJ with Verizon. For more info on TxtLJ, check out the FAQ.

Paid features you enjoyed

• In December, we introduced My Stats, which provides detailed data on who's been viewing your entries as well as statistics on commenting, RSS requests, friending history, and more. Despite a few early glitches, the response has been extremely favorable.
• This year, we launched and improved Notes (i.e., the feature formerly known as Alias), which lets you add private comments on friends and commenters (it's in the Profile drop-down menu). This way you won't be caught red-faced when you strain to remember details about that wonderful LiveJournal friend who sent you a birthday vGift. For more info, read the FAQ.
• When we first announced View friends pages by date, we thought it would be a quiet, minor enhancement. The rave reaction floored us, which made us all very happy. We gave it a fine tuning in February of 2009, so it's even better!
• How embarrassing! It appears pingbacks have gone back to the shop for service. We’ll keep you posted. We didn't know just much you liked pingbacks until it went in for service. It's back and, judging by your irritation when it wasn't available, this is good news. FYI, pingbacks send instant notifications (via screened comments) whenever someone links to one of your entries on LiveJournal. For more info, read this entry in paidmembers or check out the FAQ.

Mixed reviews

• The search is still on. Some of you have reported getting more comprehensive results for keyword searches using the new Yandex search engine and like the ability to search within content categories (like entries or comments). Others have not been satisfied with the relevancy of search results. Please be patient. We're still tweaking this product.
• This past December, we wanted to try out a new holiday promotion. Given the crap economy, we decided to offer our Paid/Permanent users a stack of $10 coupons to send to Basic/Plus users for paid account upgrades. We hoped you would like it. And some of you did, but many were disappointed that we didn't offer Give More as well. We want to thank you so much for letting us know. Your input will help us plan better in the future. Just FYI, Paid/Permanent users can continue to send out coupons through January 15th. Coupons can be redeemed through January 31, 2010.
• We were pretty excited about Your Journal Your Money, which allows Paid/Permanent users to earn extra cash by displaying Google ads to Basic/Plus and logged out users. A number of you tried it. Some of you really like it. Others, not so much. (Just FYI, Paid/Permanent users who do not participate in this program will not view ads on journals. Participants will see ads on their own journal, but won't see them on other journals unless they specifically opt in.) For additional details, visit here.
• We relaunched m.livejournal.com, our mobile app. While it offers a nicer UI and enhanced functionality, some of you think we can do better on load times. Like most of us, it's a work in progress. You can customize your mobile settings here. For more info, please read the FAQ.

Missing Inaction

• We shudder to bring up the neon purple elephant squatting on our heads, but, yes, we didn't give you those a la carte userpics. We've been making radical improvements to our backend in order to support them. But no excuses. We know you want them. We cringe every time you mention them. We're sorry we dropped the ball on this, and we promise to do our best to get them to you in 2010.

Stumbling points

• Back in early August, we experienced outages related to a series of DDoS attacks. We are proud to report that we were down a total of one hour over the course of a few days. We thank our heroic ops guys for getting us up sooner and more consistently than any of our less fortunate social networking friends. We apologize for leaving you temporarily stranded.
• A couple of months back, we offered a free, unrestricted vGift, which induced a snowflake cookie avalanche. This resulted in backed up/delayed notifications, which, in turn, led us to reboot systems, rendering scrapbooks unavailable. It took a while to shovel free. Apologies for the inconvenience. We learned a valuable lesson that should keep us calamity-free in the future (fingers crossed while knocking on wood).
• That darn Best Buy ad. First off, we're sorry about the audio auto-play (we got it turned off as quickly as possible). While it's true that we'll continue to show this type of ad to accounts that normally see them (never to Paid/Permanent accounts), we'll make sure the sound defaults to off moving forward. We promise to do our very best to keep ads to a minimum on LiveJournal, while keeping a roof over Frank's head.

Full steam ahead!

As we plunge headfirst into the next decade, we want to take a moment to look back and thank all of our employees, both past and present, who have worked so hard to create our unique and magical universe. We couldn't have made it this far without you: Your contributions brighten our path everyday. We also want to extend our heartfelt appreciation to each and every one of you. Whether you've been around for ten days or ten years, your humor, intelligence, talent, and creativity are what makes this the most vibrant global community on the Internet (the best place on the Web, in our humble opinion). Here's hoping that 2010 will be the greatest year yet! We thank you for joining us as we embark upon another glorious decade of LiveJournal history!

My Lady, you have drifted away from me
Our heart's anchor loosened by life's jest;
Words unsaid, feelings unspoken
Doubts welling, fear festering
Under the shroud of excess compromise;
Blinded by the notion that the slightest tremor
Will have us come undone

Yet irony has it
That these uncertainties
Did soften the seabed our hearts rest on;
All is for naught as what we fought
So hard to avoid
Has reared its ugly head
And paid a heavy price

My heart calls out to you as it bleeds
It hears my name and beckons
Yet through a forest of thorns I must find thee
And brave the splinters that drive themselves through my core
I bleed still and weaken
Yet the memories I hold of us becomes my crutch
For how long?

Do you bleed as I do, hurt as I do
Befuddled in your sleep, just as I?
Why do guilt and fear still fester after forgiveness
Hath laid its loving hands on thee?
I will perservere as you asked
As I hope and pray the thorns on our sides be taken
That we may sail together again
In the same sea.