Thinking about the internet

On livejournal some of the people who make up my friends' list have been talking about the Bust Lounge lately. I started posting on the Lounge in 1999 after stumbling onto it from a website called Disgruntled Housewife (don't know if this still exists and doubt it would make it through the web filter here) while I was working my first office job as an Office Clerk at an Architectural Engineering firm in Detroit. My first post was about my new and about to end relationship with Jeremy and how I was stressed out because it was supposed to be a simple summer fling but now had all these emotions involved and this boy totally liked me more than I liked him and it was just too much, too much! And the first person to respond to me was the lady we all know and love as LorMo, Inc. who told me to get over myself and not to be such a spaz (but nicer).

That was the beginning of a long, long affair with the Bust Lounge. For awhile it was really good. People online there supported me when I moved to Las Vegas more than anyone else in my life. They told me it was okay to try this new place and they also told me it was okay to admit that I had made a mistake and leave. I wonder sometimes if I didn't use that space as too much of a crutch, as a reason to hide out a bit and avoid the real world, but at the same time I don't know if I would have even lasted 6 months without those women supporting me and giving me things to laugh and cry about.

And those same women saw me through the move to Chicago and my difficult first year living there. The time I spent online waxed and waned depending on jobs and online drama (I totally love a good interweb fight! There's something so awesome about what people will say when you can't see their faces, the way polite society just breaks down). I learned a lot about myself and my politics while posting on those boards, a lot of my ideas changed around completely after I passionately fought for one side of an argument and realised that my views were actually unsupportable and foolish and a lot of my ideas became even more firmly grounded as I took closer looks at myself and realised I was totally 100% right. I made some good and great friends and maintain contact with many of the women I met there to this day, 3 of them are represented on the right side of this screen and they make up the bulk of my Friends' List on Livejournal.

But something changed for me around 2002, actually I can place it to an exact day in 2002 but that would force discussion of some private issues I choose not to blog about, anyhow, in early 2002 the love affair began to fade for me and I began to re-examine my relationship with this internet space. While I had received immense amounts of support there for years I also felt that something was missing. I can't say where this lack was coming from. If I was giving less, getting less, needing less, I'm not sure. I know that around this time many of the people I felt closest to were leaving for personal and professional reasons of their own and I think in part I was less inclined to make the same bonds with new people. Whatever the cause, even though 2002 was another tumultuous year I found myself pulling away. I was still involved, and continued to post until approx. 2005. I find it interesting that I can remember right when I started but am hazy about when I stopped. While I remember my first post in detail, I have no clue what my final post was about.

I don't remember posting there when I was ill in 2006 despite the fact that I was online a lot then, I think I read occasionally but I've no recollection of interacting with anyone.

It's weird to me that something that was such a huge part of my life could have fallen out of my life so completely. Well not really completely, I still interact almost daily with people I met (but have never physically met) there. I could not imagine going an entire day without checking in there, even during the years when I was liking the space less and less I still felt weirdly obligated to it and then one day the obligation just disappearred. How could I have gone from needing something so much one minute to having it disappaer from my life?

It's sort of like losing a friend, that drifting apart that happens due to neglect and distance. You don't exactly mean to lose touch until you realise that you already have.

This is probably a boring entry for people who aren't involved. Sorry. I've just been hashing it around in my head the last few days so I thought I'd hash it around here too. I'll go back to bitching about phlegm and files soon enough.