Where I've Been...And Where I Want To Go...

"I started out by just wanting people's attention.  Now that I have everyone's attention, what do I have to say?"  --Madonna

     Seems like an interesting conundrum to be in, don't you think.  My reasons to get the internet to begin with back in 2001 were to keep connected to a family that was getting increasingly distant from each other, geographically speaking.  At this time, I had family that lived in Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Indiana and Illinois (mostly Illinois, but still).  I lived in Effingham, Illinois at the time and really couldn't go see anyone unless my parents swung through and picked me up.  Thus was my reason, initially for getting the internet.

     The internet at this time was very primordial and primitive.  For example, I had a notebook of urls and other stuff like that for favorite websites.  One of my earliest faves was the old www.wcwwrestling.com when Nitro was kicking RAW's butt in the ratings war.  About nine months into having the internet, I just decided to dive headlong into the whole experience just to "see what was out there" (as I told my therapist in Effingham).  Little did I know that what was out there would give me a series of semi-epiphanies that would change my life to some degree of relevance.

     I downloaded MSN Messenger to keep up with my family and chat with them since the geographic distance left it hard for me to go visit face to face.  I will tell anyone who cares that I am HORRIBLE over the phone.  When I would be typing, it became so much easier for me to put my thoughts into text.  I noticed a feature on MSN Messenger that was called simply "Directory".  "Hmmm...wonder what this is?"  What it was would make the world I lived in at that time explode to unmeasurable and infinite boundaries.  I had discovered all the users that had MSN Messenger.

     I made my first internet "friend" around March of 2002.  Her name was Memory and she lived in California.  She would be one of the underlying reasons that my girlfriend at the time and I would split up just six weeks later.  Another "friend" would lead me to almost lose my job and others came and went.  Around June of 2002, I would be introduced to MSN Groups, and that's another entry altogether.  I will say about MSN Groups that it's where I met roughly one fifth of my Facebook friends list at.

     MSN Groups led to a hot site for late teens and early twentysomethings called MySpace.  MySpace had a ton of bad press when I joined it in 2004.  I tried harder than hell to keep it from interfering in my life by attempting to keep the drama away from my page.  Little did I know that MySpace would lead me to dizzying heights doing the job I love doing now.  If it weren't for MySpace, there would be no Vision Of Punk, Inc.

     Just like with MSN Groups, I met more interesting people on MySpace.  I cross-branded my MSN Group (Youth Gone Wild) with a MySpace group (given the same name) and landed the MSN Group at the #1 Activity spot for ten solid months of the fourteen it was in existance.  MySpace helped me to create Vision Of Punk, Inc., which is for internet based models to have an outlet to promote themselves.  Both Youth Gone Wild and Vision Of Punk, Inc. will be separate entries here sometime in the future.

     In 2006, shortly after my 10-Year High School reunion, I started feeling this urge to get back to my roots.  "Who am I?"  "Have I lost who I am at the core because of the internet?"  "Can I keep up with the rest of my class?"  Facebook would replace MySpace as my preferred method of keeping connected.  I would find roughly half of Shelbyville (IL.) High School's Class of 1996, as well as everyone that I went to Elementary School with in Findlay, IL.  That made for a friends list of 80 right there combined with the roughly 35 that I brought over from MySpace to Faceboook that was in the MSN Group I had.  I found my roots and didn't let the other stuff interfere as much.

     My mom would say I live off the internet.  I'm no different than the settlers that came over from England in the 1700s.  I'm no different than the explorers that settled the West in the 1800s.  I'm no different than the men and women that would reach the heavens from 1900 to 1970.  There's a ton out there in cyberspace that I personally want to explore.  Weather my curiousity will be satiated remains to bee seen.  I do know that my thirst for knowledge never will be satiated, so I might as well look at the world from a safe place.