Wednesday, July 05, 2006

the one where i get sentimental about going crazy

I just unpacked a box and found my old college writing in a fat, white binder. Made the mistake of reading it.

So, uh, did everybody else know how crazy I was? How sleep deprived, nutritionally imbalanced, and perpetually stressed? Or was I exceptionally good at hiding it? I can't believe anyone spoke to me ever.

Reread my first "blog" entries from October 1996. Back then I called it a journal. The front page featured the very best in animated *.gif technology -- a spinning skull and a horizontal rule made out of dripping blood -- white text against a black background and a fancy banner. Also a user poll asking readers to submit their 10 favorite books and music. Lots of people submitted. Truly though, my page was only popular because of the word "domination" in its title. You can still find references to it on some search engines.

Once a dominatrix wrote to see if I'd be good enough to connect with one of her charges. I remember I asked her some questions of my own, it was all very informative. I wonder if I still have those e-mails...

Hey, does anyone remember the Sunny Delight hidden bottle challenge? Around '96, SunnyD posted clues to websites and you had to find SunnyD bottles embedded in different web pages. There were far fewer pages then, but I was addicted. I was lucky to be one of the few in our dorm/res hall with an ethernet card, borrowed as part of an experiment to see if there was any future in this wacky internet phenomenon, and I'd stay awake into the wee hours, monitor aglow with 16 colors, scouring the internet. I didn't find very many bottles. But it established an enduring and unhealthy pattern/passion of surfing for random tidbits of nothing at the expense of eating, sleeping, or going outside.

Of course prior to the SunnyD challenge, I had lynx to keep me warm at night. But that's another story for another sentimental day.

2 comments:

ASK said...

Christy:

I don't know if this is any better or worse (probably a different sort of problem), but my high school journal had one rule: I could not write about anything personal. I was too afraid someone would discover my journal. I ended up dropping it altogether because I would write around my problems in these long and drawn out entries that would go for ten or fifteen pages.

Folly Blaine said...

Hi Adam! Good to hear from you... My rule is that I can make fun of myself all I want, but when it comes to other people I have to assume whatever I write will get back to them. Mostly I haven't offended people by what I've written, but by what I've left out. A guy once sent me drunk hate mail because I didn't write up an account of our "date" -- it involved him urinating in front of me in a parking gargage and I thought I'd spare him. Unfortunately he didn't want to be spared.

I killed previous incarnations of my journal for different reasons. The first journal, someone stole and put it in an art installation. It just wasn't the same after that. The second journal's fate was sealed when I took a year-long break. I was in a deep rut and needed to be in a better place before I wrote again. And now there's this one.

I figure I'll keep writing here until it stops being fun. Then I'll just move on to something else.