LJ Idol Presents:

July 27th, 2006.

Where were you? What were you doing?

I know what was happening in MY life.

hilhilbean had convinced me that if I were to have another one of those "LJ Idol" events, that I needed to do it in a community rather than on my personal LJ. (A number of people had chimed in with that "advice". :D)

I didn't know anything about LJ communities at the time, so she set it up for me.

That happened 10 years ago, and launched Season 2 and everything people think of when they think "LJ Idol".

The community itself was born on that day, and has only continued to grow.

I'm working on a project right now, and part of it is trying to get an accurate number of how many people have walked through these doors. I have all the names but am in the process of weeding out the aliases. With the multiple usernames, it's over 1,000. With them weeded out, it's just under 1,000.

(and if you want to help me out - email me the aliases you have used over the years! :D I always tell people to send me them to my gmail address... but I'm having to comb through that, my rocketmail address, LJ email and FB messenger! :D)

Nearly 1,000 people.

10 years.

That's meeting 100 new people every year.

Thank you to each and every one of you who have come through these doors.

I've said before that part of LJ Idol was that it was giving me something to focus on in the years after my divorce. Until this morning though, I'm not entirely sure if I realized that the founding of this community was on *my wedding anniversary*.

Talk about being obvious about it! ;)

I've now been running Idol longer than my ex-wife and I were together!

Thank you for each and every one of those days! (Even the "bad" ones, I think Idol is better for having them.)

I may have a few updates in the coming months as I make my way through my project.

But for now - thank you, and I hope to see you in October for Season 10!