I have grown up on the Internet, so to speak. The Internet has changed our world forever and for me, that forever change began around the age of 12. I remember the dial-up Internet that took over our phone lines; fighting for time online versus time on the phone. I remember being kicked off the Internet when my older sister was awaiting a phone call from their friend. No other forms of real-time communication existed at this point in time, which made the pagers my siblings and I received one Christmas an exciting gift to receive!

Unfortunately, I did grow up in a sort of poverty. While we had the pagers, we couldn’t afford to get them hooked up immediately. I grew up with an older brother and an older sister, so there were three of us altogether. Along with my siblings, we also had a slew of pets throughout my childhood. My mom was mostly a stay-at-home mom though she did dabble in jobs here and there. My dad worked as a gas fitter away from home for most of my memory, being laid off as jobs completed then he would do odd-jobs. I remember he had a painting business at one point… And my mom had a job at a pet shop which she eventually bought and revamped into her own store using a creature drawn by my grandfather. I wonder if I would be able to find a picture of that character somewhere… It was an adorable critter for the store, “Critter City.”

The store went well until the new highway was built, allowing our small town easier access to the big cities which lead to too much competition for our little shop.

I’m on a tangent… But that is kind of the point behind this random post. I’ve been in my head and feeling rather existential lately with the pandemic looming over our heads, causing massive ripples throughout our country, our community, and between family members. The amount of people who have ostracized their loved ones over their medical status is disheartening to say the least. This truly is the most harsh psychological phenomenon I have experienced in my lifetime. More so than the advent of the Internet if you can believe that.

Back to growing up with the Internet. I remember being 13 and chatting on Alamak Chat. Talking with strangers… Oh man. How times have changed. My sister coached me in how to respond to “A/S/L?” Age, sex, location… Does anyone remember that? We’d say we were in Vancouver so as to not give out our real location. We’d say I was 15 and I was 5’5 because–as my sister said–it just sounds nicer than my at-the-time 5’3″ and a half. Quickly, I learned the dangers of the Internet as a child — cybering. I don’t think we hear that term much anymore; cyber sex/cybering. “Wanna cyber?”

This was back in the day, before there were easy ways to share images of ourselves and before digital cameras were readily available. We had to take a picture taken in a film camera, develop the photographs, scan the images with a scanner, then attach it to an email in order to share images of ourselves. Now it is so easy to send photographs… So easy that it can be done accidentally now.

I don’t think I have a point to this post other than me just kind of typing and letting my mind go wherever it wants. I started multiple “webpages” on geocities. I remember one, “poetry_babe” where I would post random poetry. There was another one I made with my school photo and many really silly animated gifs. Oh man. The days of the most atrocious, eye damaging graphics. haha

It wasn’t too long before I made my own website from scratch, learning HTML from a physical book that my mom had purchased. It was something like “Websites for Dummies.” From there, I learned of the W3c and the rules of the web with HTML and CSS. I made a cam site that was just a cam site — no provocative stuff. I was a “Cam girl” before the term was applied to sex workers. I would have casual “cam” sessions where I would chat with people. There wasn’t streaming back then, though; it was an image uploaded to a webpage and that page was set to refresh every so often.

I also had an online journal. A web log. You now know this as a blog. I’ve kept a blog for decades… Hard to believe now. I have had this particular blog for over a decade now… And I still am not able to keep doing it on a consistent basis lol Maybe one day I will be able to use this blog more frequently. I want to use it as my catharsis as I really enjoy writing and just letting my mind take me wherever it needs to go, purging the emotions through my fingers into my keyboard. Writing is a way of percolating all the intricacies of my life and my mind. This is one of the reasons I actually enjoyed nursing Domains of Practice and journaling while I was in nursing school.

After particularly hard days at work, I sit down and write offline journals to help me evaluate things I could have done better. What I was proud of. What I hoped would happen… What learning I could benefit from.

I digress.

Does anyone remember Renee? Sacred.nu I think was one of her websites. I looked at her website’s source code and began reverse engineering it in a way to learn more about webpage design. ChelleCam was another one I frequented. I unfortunately forget if she was team Coke Cola or team Pepsi.