online Life

This is my second attempt at starting up this blog. The first time I tried to do it anonymously. I wanted it to be a sort of outlet to write down all my thoughts and ideas, mostly my thoughts and ideas about stuff that made me angry - suburbs, facebook, the school system - I was going to update it regularly and really practise my writing, edit properly and so on. Yet, like many of my grand schemes, my upkeep of the blog sort of fizzled out and eventually... died. I can't tell you how many stories I've started, businesses I've half imagined, languages I've tried to learn, scripts I've half written and so on. I'm a chronic beginner and finishing failure. So, for this second attempt, I am not committing myself to any large-scale project or leaving myself with any grand expectations. I will write when I feel like writing and it doesn't have to be snazzy, it may just be a post about something I thought was cool and decided to share. No more, no less.

Part of the reason for the re-attempt at personal blogging is my new blog Lascaux du Monde that I started with a friend. She manages to update her personal blog quite regularly and through reading her blog, and discussing our joint one, I've started to take to blogging again. Also, as Facebook is fading as an online social network (for me at least), blogging seems to be rising and of course I don't want to get left behind...

It's interesting how online social networks tend to go in and out of fashion amongst friends. First there was MSN, which most people I know started using around middle school. We would exchange emails with eachother at school so we could go home and talk to eachother online - making plans to hang out, exchanging answers to homework, (and so on...). We were the lucky generation of pre-teens whose parents didn't really understand the internet yet or what their kids were doing with it. Then there was LiveJournal. I started using LiveJournal in high school because I was too busy to be on MSN. My friends and I kept LiveJournals as a sort of way of keeping up with what we were all doing. Even though we saw eachother every day at school we were so busy with jobs, extracurriculars and so on that we hardly had time to really talk. LiveJournal acted as a sort of personal and social outlet, we'd vent and then make party plans. Somewhere in between all this I was using other sites like Fictionpress.com which inevitably spread amongst our friends (tofurky) and other reading and writing sites. LiveJournal gave way to Facebook at the beginning of university because, as I remember one of my friends stating "It has pictures." I tried to resist it, but it just became essential, instead of someone asking you for your MSN or phone number they'll ask you for your name. So they can search you on Facebook. Events will be posted on Facebook and people won't even tell you about them to your face because they think you've already seen it on Facebook. I never liked Facebook that much, I see its good sides but we're not very compatible. And now here's Blogger.com, which I have to say I enjoy much more. But, like I said, I'm not 'committing' myself to anything...

I'd like to think my online life is not a very accurate reflection of my real one.