Good morning, Blogipelago!
I have traveled far to reach these .jpg shores from the vast, barren lands of Xanga in search of a layout that is both non-offensive to the eye and free of tithes to invisible masters. A place where one can come with nothing and rise to the highest peaks of Blogayans where only fame and possibly if one is lucky a boat made of money awaits and become the hunting grounds for the wild tribes commenters and the passive swarms of watchers.
I was not always a Xangodian. I was raised on The Compass-Rose-Shaped Island on the IRL Peninsula, but as I got older, I became more unsatisfied with my provincial life and escaped for the islands in the Ocean of Subculture where the otaku roam. Together, my friends and I went forward on our IE 1.0 and Firefox 1.0 rafts to join other boats on the volcanic chain of RPG Forums. Multi-leveled complexes and simple chat-like thread centers alike gathered together upon the free servers, only a cursor's click away at times, but in complete denial of each other's existence once inside the forum walls. It was the best and worst times of my life. I demanded too much at times, attempting to rule the thread like a malevolent god with a screen and a d20. I loved too easily and was hurt with the same difficulty. The character was a vampire, (C)ed at that. I was an alien of my own creation. Our untyped love was not meant to be as we two users past each other like browsers in the night, never daring, never meeting. It was only after Firefox 2.0 but before AIM 6.0 that we finally IMed our love.
One day, I saw myself as the lotus eater I had become, an addict to the post and thread. I tried to quit, but nothing worked. The withdrawal was simply too severe. I looked at myself in the mirror and was not happy with what I saw. I was determined to try again. Slowly weening myself off through small doses of fanfictions and e-mails as I transversed the seas once again towards my childhood home, IRL. After a period of recovery, I slowly drifted away once more, drawn to the excitement of the new country lands of Xanga and the then small, but growing cluster of data dubbed Wikipedia. I had made a blog and sent e-mails to my friends to inform them of my move. Ironically enough, even though I had a blog to write upon, I was more of a wanderer than ever before, sailing back and forth between Xanga, IRL and the coasts of DeviantArt. My blog in Xanga quickly fell into disrepair, but I always returned to try to shape it into a fine example of a homepage. During a time of its disrepair, I was reunited with my online object of non-Platonic affection. We IMed and Skyped and even txted once or twice. But things were different now. It was a love too late to last. I already found a love of my own outside my raft and the wide oceans and continents of Internet. My romanticized cardiac muscle and consciousness was entwined with this entity of flesh and blood. My beloved of data and sound did not stand a chance against such a contender. I loved truly and deeply and it hurt in kind to severe those ties, but it hurt more to continue to face the fact that I divided the love that was meant for one person between two. I realized later that my love for the user was not what I thought it was. It was a love of a companion that understood completely, the love of a partner, not of a lover. The mental was always there, but the physical could never follow. In the end, it was kinder to leave than to stay.
Now, I have a profile in Facebook and check up on my DA account every now and then. I visit my true love on the Island of Slash many a time, but never stay too long to meet the locals. Looking back on my life, I decided it was time for a change. It was time to put myself out in the open.
For all this time, I have hidden myself away in the hermitudes of the Web, keeping all I possess untagged and unmarked. Now, I step out of the Caves of Watchers to post:
I
AM
WRITER
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