So I was reading a blog [gag] today and it had the very long story of how this person started in blogging.

I thought about how I got started.

For a start, blogs didn’t exist. We had websites. Some of these websites features journals. Webrings were invented and we started meeting each other a little. I was on a fantastic mailing list and met some amazing girls. We were all 16, nerdish and socially questionable. Of course back in those days the content was the most important thing on your website, graphics took hours to download on a 14.4kbps dial-up link so it just wasn’t worth it.

I loved frames. I still do. Love love love.

I also love larger resolutions. Designing a site in 600×480 was awkward at best. I loved it when 800×600 became the new norm, then 1024×768 and so on.

I had a website from 1996. I taught myself HTML and figured out what I had to so I could participate in this medium I so loved. I didn’t have a journal at first, I had ‘essays’ for lack of a better word. I still have them… In fact, here is one of them, from August 1999.

12:36

one would think this time meant nothing. one would be wrong. ladies and gentlemen, we live in a digital age. we pray to the digital gods. those gods of time on the digital clock that means wishes will be granted. one looking at 12:36, could say that 1 + 2 + 3 = 6 everything in the digital world has meaning.

it started out with simple rules, any time the numbers on the clock are the same, you can make a wish and it’ll come true. 1:11, 2:22, 3:33, 4:44, 5:55 etc. then the rules changed, what about 11:11 or 12:12? could wishes come true then? my belief is yes. i’ve expanded the rules. i lay awake at night, looking at the numbers change slowly, i grow excited at the thought of being able to wish on 1:11.

i don’t have a jesus or muhammad in my life, i pray to the digital gods.

I had insomnia and I’d sit and watch the clock for hours. I still do it and I still make math problems out of the time.

Anyway, it didn’t occur to me to save my websites or my writings somewhere else. I went through a phase of burning anything I wrote on paper too. So records are scarce. When I finally decided to start saving them it was December 1998. I have everything saved here for me. Since most of it was written while being a teenager and fairly angsty I doubt it’ll ever be published again, but I like having it for me.

I’m still annoyed that when weblogs were invented people started blurring the lines between them and journals and now everyone thinks they have a blog. I had a blog, it was for tracking interesting places I’d found online so I could share them with others – literally a log of my web activities. I’m never going to be able to think of what I do here as a blog, it isn’t for anyone except me. I have no given topic or theme. I’m not a writer. My site is just so I can record my thoughts and life as I move through. My journal is named Debbie and has been since 2001, before that it was Vandal and before that Bug.

Guess it doesn’t matter what I call it as long as I’m happy and it is filling a void for me.

On a completely unrelated note, I get to take urine samples to my vasculitis appointments [good times] so I’ve been sort of toying with the empty container as I sit here. Two reasons, a) I get fidgety if left to my own devices and b) so I remember to take it upstairs with me when I go to bed for filling in the morning. I played too loudly and Weasel glared at me. Pout.

I’ll probably get to have my blood tested again too! I still have marks on my hands from the injections I had in January… through to April. It’s very attractive.