I’ve spent a long time on the internets. The Google has proven this to me.
I felt a bit like an archaeologist this afternoon, taking a moment to browse through archives of things I’d written up to 6 years ago. The internets never forget. And, it seems, they never forgive for being an anxious child playing in a world that never made any sense to you.
I found the blog entry I made when my sister died. Relived the pain all over again.
Found references to friends that I used to coordinate on the Web with. Found archives of their journals, read through some–even the Great Internets cannot keep track of everything. Like holes in my memories, the 404s stacked up.
Read about a vacation I made to Canada in 2001. Found an image quoting k10k when I started a very poorly-planned design competition. Read about an experience that I had while working at a game store that reminded me just how precious life is, and just how capricious our hold on it is.
1 June 2002 - Yesterday, while at my rather benign job, a nurse came in. The store I work at is located only a few blocks away from the hospital. He was a little scatter-brained, clearly not accustomed to being surrounded by video game beeps, music, movie trailers — the standard lot in a game store. He walked directly up to the counter and looked at me straight in the eye. After pressing the usual pleasantries of customer-clerk relations, he came to his issue.
“I have a patient in the isolation ward,” he said, “and he’s not doing very well. We don’t think he’s going to make it much longer.” My heart sank, remembering the same conversation my family had about my sister with Dr. Q. “I was wondering,” his eyes wandered a bit, looking as though they were squelching tears, “if you have any games I could buy for him? He has a GameBoy Advance, I think, but he doesn’t have any games left that he hasn’t beaten.”
We picked out a few. I gave him my employee discount. I put the four games into a bag and tried to hand him the reciept. “I won’t need that,” he said, then smiled a weary smile — the smile you give when you are running out of things to hold on to. The smile you give when you’re expected to be professional and courteous, but all you feel is raw pain and sorrow gnawing at your willpower. The smile I gave when people would ask me about my sister. She’s fine now, I would say and then smile.
Some things I’ve written have fallen too far into the dust of history. Some domains I’ve owned have changed hands so many times that it’s impossible to find the archive that actually had anything to do with me.
I’ve lived my life on the Web. I’ve, liberally, poured my soul out in text to countless strangers, hoping for something…
Recognition? Accolades? Prestige?
I’ve always had a highly romanticized view of what the Web is all about. I’ve fought with many, many people the tired old content-is-king argument. I’ve misplaced anger at corporate hierarchies on friends, family, loved ones. I’ve thrown my heart at shot-in-the-dark relationships, and written about them all.
It’s a weird feeling, to know that you’re actually _exposed_.
Really exposed. But this time, this place, that might be okay.
Comments (3)
I expose myself and make myself vulnerable almost every day. The more I do it, the more confident I am in myself and my ability. jps*
Hi, love the site.
I’m still finding my feet as it were with this internet thang and especially blogging. I’m a rather astonished at finding that I don’t seem to have a lot to say.
I think this may be because I’m coming to terms with a new form. Time will tell.
It appears to me that your writing has evolved with your involvement in “The Web” and technubology. I have enjoyed tremendously reading some of the posts here at Broken Hat Trick. So much so that I will return.
=) Slainte
Ged
A cathartic exercise, the stuff of blogging. I, too, go back to the undying (preserved probably forever in cyberspace) posts I’ve shoved out the door over the last three years. My first reaction is that many of my earliest posts were marginally articulate, but brim-full of a pretty outrageous acerbicism (I’ll make up a word!) that, now, doesn’t really embarrass me, but, rather, provides me with perspective—I’ve come a ways (at least, I hope I have) from those early rages and rants. So, too, the blogging has provided a sharing of sorts of those things that affect me deeply—the death of Sweet Melissa, for instance. Many posts on your blog, like mine, provide that, at times, unrequited and sometimes acknowledged grasp for a sharing of those heartfelt events that otherwise—if not for the blog—might remain hidden, unspoken. Thank you for your good words, Stephen.