Someone seems to have anonymously gifted me a paid LJ account for two months.

I know I should be really happy about getting a free gift ( What? Oh yeah, also moaning and being outraged about the violation of my rights to Free LJing), but what really scares me is the thought of what exactly I am going to do with a paid account. Frankly speaking, I have never even considered getting myself one. Partly because I am a lazy something of a some-other-thing LJ-er who would rather click refresh on his friends’ page the whole day instead of musing about life or venting my ire at things that annoy me. ( No, Kisna doesn’t count, O Unkind Dissenters to the previous statement of mine.) In fact, I have realised that I am quite happy not musing about life and indulging in fanciful consumerist rampages every other day. Most people I know, including myself, treat these rampages as impending signs of my landing up someplace where the jackets are strait and people carry electric prods in their back-pocket, or ending up bankrupt, or both. Writing about my acquisitions are thereupatic. I write about, say, one of every ten things I buy, and when I look at my LJ later and read about how less I seem to have bought the past couple of months, the juices begin flowing, and eBay beckons yet harder.

Sorry, got sidetracked there for a moment.

So, a paid account. Lots of iconspace, which means I will have to spend some time searching for those tiny pics that make me laugh. The only ones I like seem to be taken by other people, and I dunno, it seems like a very personal thing to do, stealing using someone else’s icon. Not that I would use them anyway. Somehow I seem to forget all about the “change userpic” option everytime I leave a comment on someone’s post, and end up using the default userpic. It’s not funny, I know, seeing Gollum’s leery face accompanying a rather serious comment from yours truly ( *giggle* “serious” comment), but I convince myself that the expression on my default userpic can be interpreted in multiple ways. Try looking at him real hard, can you detect that vein of emotion in his evocative eyes? Can you? Bah, you weren’t looking hard enough.

There are also these neat customizable options I can now apply to my Livejournal and make it really spiffy, but I went to the “manage” page and got a headache. Tried reading the FAQ, and then figured that reading my friends’ page and clicking “refresh” was a more entertaining option. Besides, I always thought the minimalist, black-and-white approach to my main page really kicks ass.

Voice posts – you crazy? I already have people looking at me strangely everytime I am reading through vrikodhara‘s old posts, and now I am supposed to talk to myself in my cubicle and have all my colleagues, on top of gazillions of unknown people ( well, that was just a random number I thought up, to be honest) listen to what I have been doing? No way, Jose!

Erm, in case you are reading this, O anonymous gifter, and wondering at the ingratitude I seem to be displaying at your gesture of goodwill, allow me to assure you that ingratitude is the last thing on my mind. I was really, really zapped when I saw the mail in the morning and, with emotions ranging from euphoria to unbridled curiousity, I called up a couple of friends I know to figure out if they were responsible for this. It turned out to be none of them, and I was even more enthused. My, my, Houston, we have a secret paid-account-bestower, and probably I will never know the reason why I have been gifted one.

Then, of course, familiar beatzoian paranoia won through, and I waited for sometime for a mail from LJ that said – “We are sorry, there has been a mistake and this paid account was meant for someone else.” Or one from some other LJ guy named “beatz” or “beatxo” that said “eh, I misspelled my name while filling in the paid account form, give me my money back.” Even did a quick check around other users to figure out if this was LJ’s idea of a Christmas gift. All the time remembering to click efresh on the friends’ page every now and then, yes.

None of this happened, and by the end of the day, I became pretty sure that I had indeed received a gift. MINE, ALL MINE!!! Which is when it hit me, the question of what exactly I would do with a paid LJ account.

So I thought and thought, and came to a conclusion. ( Part of me itches to say “And the conclusion is – I am shutting down my LJ. Bwahahahaha!” We be thinking nassty thoughtss, precious) The conclusion being, yeah, I will pay better attention to my Livejournal. I will not neglect it the way I have this year. Not that I will blather meaninglessly, but expect the frequency of posts to increase. In other words, this will be a live Livejournal, instead of the intermittently-zombified Journal that it is right now.

Whoever you are, thank you for your gift.