I have very mixed feelings about the whole use of the term "friending" to describe how we watch and unwatch each other's journals, but that term isn't likely to go away just because I don't like it, LOL, so I thought I'd make this post.

I get email frequently from those who have added my journal to their friends list, mostly in order to watch for my fic updates, asking why I didn't friend them back. I haven't added anyone except an icon community or two in a long time, because I'm not that active on LJ anymore. I always post openly when I do post, whether it's a personal post like this, or a fic update.

I think a lot of fic writers, vidders, and artists struggle with this issue, because so many people friend us to see our new work, but they may be from other fandoms or post about their lives etc, and thus it can make our own friends pages less relevant to us, and a bit harder to navigate. If the filter could be locked in, that might be a good solution, but it can't... so a lot of us create fic, icon, vid, or graphics communities to post our work, and try to keep our journals for personal use. I'm not wild about that option for myself, for many reasons.

However, I also don't want to hurt anyone's feelings (hence, my hatred of the term "friend," which I think makes that more of an issue than it has to be). Since I now mostly follow my friends on LJ via email notifications instead of using my friends page, I was thinking I might do a mass friending of everyone who has friended me, to avoid hurt feelings and emails asking, "Why didn't you friend me back? What did I do wrong?"

I'm also aware that even making this post makes me sound massively self-absorbed and I feel very conflicted about it, but I just got another sad email and I can't take it anymore, yo!

*sprinkles fairydust everywhere*

So, am I just being neurotic? Do those of you who friended me to watch for fic updates feel bad that I haven't friended back? I honestly love and appreciate all my readers, and I don't want you to feel excluded, but I don't post flocked posts, really truly. You can look at my calendar and see -- if there are any, they're either old, or maybe drafts I posted of challenge fics or something, just to get the code ready to post when the challenge was done.

I am an open book. :)

I do post fandom stuff in addition to fic at IJ, and you can always add the feed for that journal to your LJ friends page if you are interested in those posts -- just click here, it's exactly like friending someone's LJ.

But all my fic gets cross-posted here, and I will continue to do that, so if that's what you want, there is no need to do anything -- although of course, if you want to say HI THERE, that's great, too. :)

Xie