welcome to internet diary

i still remember the world before wifi.

as a child, “using the computer” meant offline-by-default activities: games on cd-rom, microsoft paint, and for a while, learn-to-type programs on floppy disks. the thrill of using the computer made hours pass quickly, despite the chill of the basement room our family desktop was stationed in.

it’s nostalgic now to remember how simple things made us so happy back then. i spent hours in what became my favorite program — microsoft publisher, no joke — designing brochures, magazines, and business cards for invented persons. i created stories about my stuffed animals and my pets. i learned to use word art, clipart, and color theory as i built different palettes for my publications. at school, i prided myself on my advanced knowledge of such topics — most of my provincial classmates had no such advantage.

when we finally moved beyond the dial-up era, my thirst for the internet, and the limitless new realms it teased, became unquenchable. looking back, i really did spend an inordinate amount of my youth online.

for the most part, i grew up in a rural environment, and my parents 1) had no idea what i was doing on the web, and 2) weren’t prepared to protect me. i can remember first exposures to the darker sides of the internet: to violations, perversions, and the loss of innocence (but all that’s talk for another time).

at 13, i gave myspace a try. my mistake was in asking for parental permission — my mother wanted access to the account and i soon got a weird message from some random man. of course she made me delete it.

rather than allowing this to staunch my enthusiasm, i simply decided that from then on, my activities would have to become more secretive.

let me add some context here: i grew up in the middle of nowhere. my parents bought some land, built a house, and tried living the quasi-off-grid dream. there was no city water supply, we had a well. there was no garbage truck, we had to cart our trash to the county dump. there was no corner store, we drove to buy groceries once per week or two. the bus ride to and from school could take an hour, and i couldn’t stay after for extracurriculars, because how would i have gotten home?

in short, there were no neighbor’s kids to run around with. there was no one for miles. and without other kids around, the internet became my social outlet.

at 14, i opened an account on blogspot, where i probably spent days, cumulatively, on designing my page. i wrote about my frustrations with my family. i documented my self development. i invented stories and characters. i shared lyrics, poems, hopes and dreams. i dealt with many complicated emotions about my life situation and the deep sadness and longing i felt. it was like any other teenage journal, but it was online.

not much later, i discovered tumblr, which is essentially where i would hang out after school from ages 15 to 18. at some point during those years my family moved to suburbia, but i was already hooked on the internet. i’d made friendships there that felt real. most of the other kids i met online seemed to be like me: lonely, awkward, outcast, and lacking in extracurriculars and parental supervision.

over the years i created, made private, and deleted around a dozen blogs across different platforms. some of them are still out there, and it’s crazy to me that i can go back and access some timecapsuled version of myself from 15 years ago. (i guess this will be normal to kids growing up nowadays?)

as i start this, yet another chance at writing a new story, i recall the bio i wrote for my website two years ago:

the internet has been both friend and foe to me since my early teenage years, becoming irrevocably woven into my modes of expression and sense of self. the internet is my diary; pages and scraps of who i was, and who i am, are scattered across its void.

i create not only as a compulsion, but also as a plea:
is anybody out there?
can anybody hear me?

this time around, i’m asking different questions. still, i leave you with an impression of my past, as i look toward the future i am creating.

with this new chapter, i am stepping fully and with confidence into the person i am becoming. and unlike those early days, when blogging was an act of desperate escapism, it is now with the utmost intention that i place my pen to this paper.

thank you for reading and for being here.

with love,

tiny