Putting Your Life On The Line (oops, I mean.Online)
Sep 21 '00
The day the internet came to live with us brought the latest in the series of dramatic turns that make up my life. Exactly one year ago our family went online and I have spent my days in front of a computer monitor ever since, being tumbled in a chaotic, insistent undercurrent with no hope of escaping anytime soon.
The beginning was innocent enough, as are all beginnings. Armed with a little experience gleaned from using the computers in the library and my brother’s house to surf the web (see how this phrase promises us skill in staying ON TOP of things, easily riding the currents?), I sat with urgent anticipation in front of the screen. A tingle came over me as it magically came to life and spoke to me (‘You’ve Got Mail!’) right in my own living room. I knew instantly that I was in it for the long run.
Not that this was my first flirtation with the likes of computers. I have been in love with them since the 1980’s when I did data entry in a mouseless office and produced newsletters by knowing which key combinations to press in order to give a static document some rudimentary graphics. I had for several years happily produced my church’s songsheets for Sunday services on a pre-Windows ’95 windows version.
But this was different. The monitor, which up to now had only displayed inert documents and spreadsheets, (albeit ones that could be played with like the paper dolls of my childhood that I dressed up to the nines), bid me to a completely new realm which lay beyond all that had been previously familiar.
After choosing the first of what was to become many screen names (and having my unique choices be rejected because, well, they weren’t quite as unique as I thought and, in the world of cyberspace, it’s ‘first-come, first served’), I set up my own email account, since I had no intention of riding along on my husband’s name for even a minute. Autonomy, thy name is cyberwoman! (Or, in my case, NurturingFirst.)
Within the first week, after bouncing around the web seeing what there was to see (and clicking myself into virtual oblivion, never remembering to return to the original site I was linking from –- don’t webbuilders realize that they lose customers by providing so many underlined escape words on their sites?), I discovered free webpages.
Free webpages! If ever there was a heaven on earth, I had found it. Born with a penchant for publishing, I carried it to fruition many times, most recently as publisher of my own magazine, NURTURING. Now, these blank screens, like so many clean sheets of paper before them, beckoned me to create captivating content, aesthetic ambiance and inspirational images simply by clicking and dragging until it all looked right. I began to find new meaning in old clichés. ‘It all clicked into place!’ now proclaims the successful completion of a new webpage, and even ‘What a drag!’ takes on a positive meaning.
I produced several personal webpages of family pictures, breezy essays, and special interests like ballet and gardening. A professional site for my network marketing business and several unfinished pages are also hovering in cyberspace.
The web, for millions, has become a creative outlet for the expression that was formerly confined to private diaries and journals. Curiously, it has also upturned the whole concept of journaling. Originally a solitary activity, generating a clandestine composition of inner thoughts and musings meant for the writer’s eyes alone, online journals are now within a few clicks’ reach of all web-savvy people -– those who stumble onto your site by accident and those to whom you have freely divulged your virtual address.
Following on the heels of the do-it-yourself webpages came the interactive sites. First, ClassMates.com. To say that this site alone has changed my life for the better is a palpable understatement. For the nine months since I serendipitously (all right, it was a banner ad) discovered this superbly-organized website, I have been cavorting with alumni from my beloved high school on its message boards, finding long-lost boyfriends and reuniting with old classmates. Over the past three and a half decades I had often wondered how my secondary school buddies were faring in life. I had even become quite wistful about it, believing that there was no way I could ever know what had become of my friends.
Enter the internet. Nine months have unearthed nine good friends (including old boyfriends) from 35-38 YEARS ago whom I had not heard of or seen in the interim. I have already had reunions with 3 of them and 3 more are on the horizon. What seeing my good friends from so long ago has meant to my life is hard to put into words. Two youth-spanned lifetimes have passed since we graduated at ages 17-18, and I have found my former cohorts to be the same good people now as they were then, cementing my long-held view that I always knew how to pick friends. To have in my life again, at age 53, my elementary and secondary school classmates – including my first grammar school boyfriend – is a bewildering joy. We email back and forth regularly, thrilled at the astonishing opportunity computers and the world wide web have given us.
Most recently, I have become involved with Epinions.com. Remembering a magazine article about this upstart dot.com company which enticed young Silicon Valley millionaires to leave their secure computer-based careers, I typed ‘epinions’ in the title bar of my browser and, once again, was drawn into a web-community that was guaranteed to take up inordinate chunks of my daily time.
Writing reviews on just about anything imaginable (including other members’ reviews), and rating and being rated on your work (usually within 2 minutes after clicking ‘submit’) by your readers is a peculiarly addictive pursuit. The fact that we get paid pennies –- literally – but, nonetheless, real money, for our efforts, elicits our inner kid -- you know, the one who clutched a pop bottle all the way to the candy store, anticipating the cheap thrill of rubbing the 2 cents together that soon replaced it.
Epinions has developed into an amazing cyber-community that you can participate in either peripherally or by fully emerging yourself into its depths, which consist of several layers of acceptance by certain initiation rituals. You won’t believe it until you see it for yourself – if you dare!
When the internet was conceived, I don’t think anyone realized just how extensively this global network would shape people’s lives. Ready to leap into action in the access-ready computer corner of your house, it really is a window, bringing the world into your home, no matter what the season, no matter where your abilities lie, no matter what you look like. Benevolently non-judgmental, the internet is your buddy, come what may.
You’ve never had a friend like this.
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Epinions.com ID:
NurturingFirst
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Member: Marga Raudsepp
Location: Trenton, Ontario
Reviews written: 9
Trusted by: 4 members
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