Okay, so no one's actually asked me anything yet, but I'm guessing that everyone will have the same general set of questions which I (being a smartass wench) will now try to anticipate.

Why did you decide to keep a journal in the first place?
I recognize this is painfully cheesy, but I realized going into the line that it could very well be a life-changing experience - not necessarily in the usual sense, but I figured that I would at least change a good deal during its eighteen-day duration. I tried not to have any preconceived notions or intentions in my writing; I just wrote what I felt like writing at any given time, which is why my style sometimes shifts so much between entries.
I've been asked why I chose to write so extensively about the people on the line. For me, the line is people. I mean, it's Star Wars, it's bad weather, it's cooperation for a mutal love, but above all else, the line experience is about meeting new people (for better or worse), forging new relationships, and existing in a situation more basic and elemental than everyday life, and the line situation simply provides a forum for those occurrences. For me to write solely about the temperature or what I read or which TV stations visited on a given day would betray the complex, weblike nature of friendships formed while waiting on line. Without people, there would be no line.
(...whoa.)

How much did you edit out?
This journal is, for the most part, verbatim from what I wrote while waiting on the line. As of May 28, the full version of the journal is 17,529 words; the edit I'm about to post is 16,448. This version is actually the result of three or four readthroughs over the course of several days and in different states of openness, not a hasty block-delete job. The parts I edited extensively were mostly things I felt were too personal for me to reveal to the whole damn internet, and I generally took out full paragraphs (as opposed to piecing together sentence fragments). In 95% of cases, I did not edit snarky comments about people. We're all adults, right?

Did you edit out any full entries?
Yes, one. It was fourteen letters long. The majority of entries are posted in full, with the only changes being the parenthetical Jay/Dave/Mark clarifications.

Can I read the whole thing?
Not really, no. You can try to bribe me into sending out the full version, but unless you can alter time, speed up the harvest, or teleport me off this rock, it ain't gonna happen. ;)

Aren't you worried about pissing people off?
Yes and no. On the one hand, I generally tend not to go hunting for conflicts, and I prefer to stay on decent terms with as many people as possible; on the other, I'd prefer to be straight-forward and honest instead of sugar-coating my opinions. I realize that I was at times pretty harsh to some line members, but that was almost unconditionally due to a certain situation at the time I was writing. I'm just as pissy as the next person when I'm wet and freezing and haven't gotten a full night's sleep in ten days, so I would ask that my rants be taken with an asteroid-sized grain of salt. (For instance: yes, I was pissed off at some of the guys who were around on May 14th because of how they were behaving that night, but I still love them to pieces in a bratty-little-sister sort of way.) Surprisingly (somewhat, at least), I've come out of the line without an unconditional hatred of anyone.

What do you have against geeks?
Absolutely nothing! I fully admit to being one. As most of the people on the line will tell you, 'geek' is more of a term of endearment - a joke, but not really a mean one. We're all geeks of one sort or another on the NYLine; it's 'the pot and the kettle' humor.

Erm... can you take some of that shit down?
If anyone has issue with what I've written and would like me to consider further editing a section, I would ask that they email me privately at lauren@atypically.net and be civil and reasonably polite. Like I said, I'm not looking to start any massive bouts of infighting, and I'm definitely open to suggestions as long as I don't feel like I'm being personally attacked.

Wow, you're a bitch.
You noticed? ;)

But what about...?
If there's anything else you're wondering about, feel free to email me at lauren@atypically.net. If it's a pretty obvious questions that I (in my smartass-ness) completely overlooked, I'll add it in sometime when I'm stuck at work and bored to tears.

last updated 5.31.02