10-02-02 @ 11:48 am EDT

My polls are no longer. Most of my surveys, my Odds & Ends and Junk Drawers, gone. Also my Neteru Profiles, all seventy-three of them, and soon to go, most of the Apsiu profile. I'll leave one static item to possibly compile that one in if I ever get the time, but that's all.

My Damien profile will probably all be put into one item and the rest deleted. The mini profiles? Unsure about that right now. My little things still in the Misc folder, possibly my Unsent Letters, and the "Ten Days In Texas" that I never got to make public will go. I'll keep the Memorial Letters if I can.

I will probably get rid of much, if not all, of my kiddie stuff, which I didn't get to make public either. If I do keep it, I'll compile the chapters into single items since most are between one and five kbs anyway.

Unsure about my unfinished novels, all those near-empty folders in the D Is For Damien series. I like having them there and in order, but they take up space. Possibly to be deleted and compiled into one static item full of introductions; I don't know yet.

What makes me saddest is my pictures. Now that I've deleted all my Neteru Profiles, I am finally back down to second place in the most static items, with StoryMistress in first. But I still believe I have the most items TOTAL, which includes pictures and nonstatics. I have very many pictures. I had planned to add more--I've found some interesting scanned ones. But I don't believe I'll be able to even with premium. My Sunsets folder will most likely go first. *sigh* :( I really liked collecting and sharing those, and Theday liked stopping by and rating them, but there are over 200 and that's a good number of things I don't REALLY need, to get rid of. I wish to keep my Mackinac Island pictures and POSSIBLY most of those from Cheboygan, maybe the out-of-state ones also...but I'm not sure. The Mackinac Island folder is the one I'll hold onto the longest. My sketches and artwork, I'm very uncertain. I never even got to share my dragon drawings. I'll most likely have to go through it and decimate it. Likewise with random pictures like those of the squirrels and cat, etc. I truly hate doing that as I have no idea which I should delete, and MD Mossburg linked to me in her photography forum, but there are just so many things in there taking up space.

The random bits of the Apsiu worldbuilding profile, many still in my private folder, will all be deleted. I never got to work on them. The in-progress/finished parts will likely be deleted too. I'm thinking of leaving a journal for that, in the future when I get time for it. I have a few journals dedicated to things I never update, so I can clean them out and tuck them away. One for the worldbuilding profile, and maybe one for character profiles of my Ameni characters, which I had planned on doing but never got around to. If that leaves any other journals they might be deleted.

Then there are some stray items I'm not sure about yet. Prologues and test items and such.

I'll confess that I had started the sequel to Manitou Island and had two static items created, both after the creation of Part 91. So I will clean those out and recycle them as Parts 92 and 93. That gives me two more weeks to somehow get the premium upgrade before Manitou Island is in trouble. Two more weeks than what I had before. Still not much time, but I'm hoping I can do it. As I said before, I guess the worst-case scenario, if I can still get the upgrade but late, is I'll have to just link to the latest parts of the story offsite and hope that the readers come back to rate it when it's posted.

What WILL be staying?

My four novels. Manitou Island and The Trench Rats. My short stories and snippets. My poems and lyrics and Mackinac Island photos. My primary journals. My fiction would be the LAST thing to go if I had to get down to it. So hopefully, aside from possible tardiness, there should be no worry about losing that. At the very least, without the polls and surveys (except two self-serving ones) and crap in my port, maybe people who stop by will focus more on what matters to ME rather than on the junk that used to be in here.

It's a lot to ask, but who knows.

I still can't help but worry though, obsessively. I keep telling myself not to. I think what worries me the most is that, even under 1600 items at premium, they plan on cutting back even MORE in a month. And I don't know by how much. I'm betting I'll get it down to a decent number, and then they'll drop ANOTHER bomb on me (I know they didn't mean to, but that's what they did--try to write the latest chapter one morning only to suddenly be told I have a limit!) and I'll have to decimate even MORE. Like I said, my images folder will really be hurting the most from all this. I can create an offsite place to post them, but I know from experience nobody wants to go offsite to look.

I do not blame them for the state of the Internet. I do not blame them for having to cut back. I don't even blame them for not announcing the limit, as I'm the only one it's affecting so far. But I AM frustrated that I couldn't have been told sooner, BEFORE I went way over the limit. I was getting really into sharing my photos here, and people have liked them...no more, I guess. I still have over 400 items that would have to be deleted before I can even put anything NEW in my port, unless I go premium. And I'm not sure when that will be, or if.

So aside from the finished Part 91 this Friday and Parts 92 and 93, and possibly working on older unfinished stories ("Antakh Of The Apsiu," "Homeward Bound," "Secrets & Lies," etc.), I guess you won't be seeing anything new around here for a while.

Have to go. Even writing journal entries makes me feel guilty nowadays. I really do honestly expect them to come in someday and tell me Skew has gone over the limit...no more entries allowed.

If you happen to see this, mind sending me a cheery e-mail? It can be shallow if you want. I don't care. At least it would remind me actual flesh-and-blood people and not some weird journal bot are reading this thing. :P