Well, I am still here. If you'd asked me back on the first few days into the transition, I'd have said the chances of me being able to hang in here were next to zip. Nada. No way.
I have finally tamed the raging river that is called "My Stream". I have published diaries, and even successfully republished one. I've risked the deep end of the pool and joined several groups, and am following many more, and finally, just today, figured out I can actually find the groups main pages again when I want to. Logging in no longer causes an elevated pulse and blood pressure, and my brain hasn't tried to exit through my ears for a couple of days now. I can finally relax and look at the bigger landscape.
DKos 4 definitely feels substantially different to me than DKos 3. In a way it feels like moving from a small town, where everything was familiar and contained, faces were pretty much all familiar, and everyone gathered in common areas on a regular basis, to a large urban city never before visited. You know the others you know are still here, but now scattered all over the place, in hundreds of separate meeting places. Pretty scary at first, but then you come to see there's a communication system in place that helps us find each other, once we figure out how to use it. For some of us, the learning curve is/was a pretty steep one.
I'm slowly getting used to the big city feel of DK 4, just like I got used to living in a big city 30 years ago, after a life lived in SmallTown, USA. I feel some of the freedom I felt back then that comes with being one of a larger crowd. I liked the sense of being more able to be myself, free of the scrutiny one gets used to in gossipy small towns. I feel freer to write here than I did on DK3: not sure why, but it feels safer. I don't feel I have to don a suit of armor, just in case it makes the rec list and offends somebody.
I like having many venues for all kinds of diaries, in addition to political works. I used to feel uncomfortable submitting non political essays on a political site. I write from a love of writing, not from any driving need to establish a readership, or accumulate mojo, or to make the "most popular" lists. But it is pleasant, always, to write where there's a chance to share with others who respond, too. Now my only concern is finding enough hours in the day to read all of the diaries that interest me.
So while I expect that small town feeling of DK3 may be gone for good, (for me, anyway) I am beginning to see how the big city feel of DK4 has some distinct advantages as well. I think time will make them all more apparent, and for the debugging process to work it's wonders.
In any case, for me, it's progressed from feeling like a very tortuous initiation process to what looks like a brand new adventure that even an old dog like me just might enjoy.
As for our Cranky Users group, I've heard talk about how it might not be necessary to keep it going for much longer. The thing is, I would miss this rowdy group.
The thought also occurred that there are many many things besides DK4 that make me cranky, and how fun it would be to have one place where it's totally acceptable to BE cranky and bitch and moan and cuss freely over whatever crazy sh*t is driving us batty on any given day.
Like right now, for example, when they're testing the *^&%#$! new fire alarm system here for the 8th time in two freaking weeks, now that they've made it LOUD enough to deafen anyone within a city block! Both cats are hanging from the light fixtures, and I can hear scared old folks in the halls not knowing what the heck is happening. (Several are from Oromo and can't understand any English, so the notices don't help them at all. How scary that must be. Gotta go help!)