The Long Road To My Online Life

Inspired by this post at the Keysmash Blog: MyFaceTwitTumJournal
 
So I was reading the latest post on Keysmash and my comment kinda ran away with me.  I had just had pain pills which make me chatty, so blame that.  But after reading through the comment I realised 1. It was really long, 2. It basically outlined my online evolution, 3. I haven't posted anything here for a while, and why not post this?  So here is my comment to the above Keysmash post in all it's chatty and roundabout glory:

"Different social media platforms definitely have different personalities.  And people use them for different things and people (I find) always prefer one over the other.  I was late to this whole connecting with people online thing.  Aside from email, I kinda felt like joining Facebook would make me vulnerable to the world. And, and... people could spy on me or track me or something. I dunno, I was young and suspicious.  I still am.  Suspicious, I mean.  How one person can see the world through rose tinted glasses and still be suspicious of EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE, I don't know, but I am.  And I digress...

Um... Where was I? Okay, right.  Facebook.  MySpace was never really a thing here (here being South Africa).  Not that I know of anyway. I kind of get the feeling that by the time we joined the internet bandwagon and people could like, have it in their home, MySpace was already dying a slow death and Facebook was the thing.  Like, I never even knew Facebook was ever not available publicly. And also, I went to University to study (shocking).  And I'm not being insulting at all.  I mean, the crowds at University terrified me, strange people terrified me, classmates terrified me, being social in any way terrified me.  This was not the same me who went to High school and started off with straight A's and slid down the slippery slope of boys and parties and drinking and boys and parties.  A thing happened. My brain melted or something and let's not talk about that.  So, come time to go to university I hoped and prayed everyday that no-one would talk to me and I could just be left alone to get my degree and maybe by the time that happened I could actually handle getting a job.  I digress again.

Point is, I wasn't socialising in real life so why would I want to socialise online?  The friends I wanted to keep and who wanted to keep me, I could keep in contact with via texting, and email and sometimes...even letters!  No need to put myself ONLINE and become vulnerable to internet monsters.

And then my best friend got married.  And she had moved provinces so we didn't get to see each other often, but I was a bridesmaid and there were a shit-ton of photos and she said "Well, why don't you just get Facebook?  I'm putting them all there anyway."  She was going to send me a disc with all the thousands of photos on (she did) but that would take a while, while the photos from her and others would go to Facebook almost immediately.  I tried to resist, I really did, but in the end, I gave in.

Wedding pics. Just me, unfortunately, coz I know I gave myself permission ;)

I bit the bullet.  I got a Facebook account, uploaded the photos I had taken, friended her and friended the maid of honour.  And then started the friend requests...  From some people I was happy to catch up with and from some I had hoped to forever forget about.  When my ex-(douchebag)boyfriend's sister wanted to friend me, I about hit the roof.  I mean she was nice enough.  But I never, ever want to know what is going on with him and that was too close a connection for me.  I feel a little bad for ignoring her request, but, you know, not THAT bad.

So I was on Facebook and then everyone started on about Twitter and I thought I had never in my life heard of a more ridiculous concept than Twitter and tweeting and wtf anyway?  And Twitter was worse than Facebook coz anyone could stalk you there and find out stuff about you and I was sure Twitter was an alias for Big-Brother-Is-Watching...  In the end, I got a twitter account because a radio station was running a competition that you could only enter via twitter.  I had an account but very little was going on there, and I very seldom checked in on Facebook. 

And then Twilight happened.  And I was late to that as well.  I saw the movie first coz Sis wanted to and I was like, what. the. hell.  An obsessive co-dependant relationship between an old man and a teenager and they "fall in can't-live-without-you love" like in 5 minutes?  No.  Just no.  And THEN Sis read the book.  In like 3 days.  And loved it.  And let me tell you, Sis doesn't read. At all.  She went through a stage of Danielle Steele, but even then it would be 6 months per book.  I tried to get her to read the first Harry Potter and it took her a year and she didn't even finish.  Sis. Doesn't. Read.  But she read Twilight in under a week?  I had to know... And the rest is history, as is the case with so many people.  And then came Breaking Dawn.  By the time I had read the first 3 books, Breaking Dawn hadn't come out yet so I had to wait.  Thrilling! And then the fade-to-black, and then the search on the internet, and then fanfiction, and then a search for Quileute mythology (I'm a historian, I had to) and then Osa Bella and then Twitarded and then I was kinda screwed.

Twitarded led me to one of my best friends, author Lori Otto, who I have blogged about many times here, and who I could only stalk and chat with via email or Twitter.  (Lucky for me, she didn't mind my stalking.) And twitter was easier. The funny thing is, that Lori far prefers Facebook.  I far prefer Twitter.  All of this led to blogs and Tumblr and now Pinterest and on and on and on.  And some Twitter friends have become Facebook friends and some Facebook friends I have met because of books we're reading, and it's like this never ending circle of online friendship.  Let's all hold hands and sing Kumbaya together *sigh*.

How did that get here...

It has all become intertwined and mixed up, but at the end of the day, each type of social media has a different personality that is better suited to certain types of activities, and is better suited to certain types of people.  I mostly browse and reblog on Tumblr (pretty pictures and porn), keep in touch with old and new friends on Facebook and chat everyday, every damn day, with online turned RL life friends on Twitter.  It's as natural as texting my family at this point.  I love my twitter friends and they have become a very important part of my life.

Each to her own.  And it works.


P.S. I wonder how many online lives were started because of Stephenie Meyer...?"

PROJECT 365: Part 17

I am a Blogess!

Day 209: I must've been a VERY good girl!

Oh my gosh!!!! My sister came and spent the Saturday with me.  We did girly stuff, like shopping and eating and wishing we had more money.  And SHE BOUGHT ME THIS! Now, Supernatural Season 7 has not aired over here yet.  I think Season 6 might be showing on some channel but we are pretty far behind.  In fact, apparently it was rather difficult for her to find a store that had Season 7 in stock.  They were either sold out or hadn't come in at all yet.  I am loving watching this because it's the first time I've been able to see the series special features like commentary and deleted scenes and gag reels.  I haven't finished watching the season yet.  I know, I know, y'all can't believe it.  I should've been finished within one weekend, but it has been (and will continue to be) a very busy few weeks.  And honestly? I don't want it to end.  Season 8 has just started to air in the US, so I'll have to wait like a whole year before it's released on DVD.  I may go into withdrawal.

Day 210: The Mostly-Fiction bookshelf.

I have 3 bookshelves (hey there's an idea for other photos...).  The first is a small one I inherited from my mother (she had no choice) which holds all my 'pretty' classics. Mostly.  The third is a - I think 'modular' is the word - a 'modular' bookshelf that I fell in love with and had to have.  And then decided it would house all my reference books.  Mostly.  The one above is the first bookshelf I bought when I moved out of my parent's house and the second I put in my new house.  It is mostly fiction, and the long term plan is that it will become ALL fiction, just as soon as I get enough bookshelves to house the non-fiction currently kept here.  It should be mentioned that my system does change periodically.  For example, my Harry Potter's and Tolkien's etc were once kept on the pretty-classics bookshelf because, well they are, but then I ran out of space.

My books are generally arranged thematically and then alphabetically.  Until I run out of space for that system and books just need to be arranged for optimum space usage.  The top three shelves here are general fiction, ending with a pile of to-read books and a manuscript from a friend that is just so good, that is where it needs to stay.  As you can see I arrange themes according to differently oriented stacks.  The next shelf is miscellaneous odd books like The Big Book of Insults.  Then important fantasy books and their associated publications starting with my Harry Potter collection, including Beedle the Bard and Hogwarts text books, and moving on to Tolkien, my Tolkien companion, my Middle Earth map, and my one LoTR movie guide.  Then come my beautiful hardcover editions of The Neverending Story and The Princess Bride. 

Next, stacked horizontally, comes the biographies, autobiographies and other real life books.  I would prefer these to have a separate shelf, but economizing is key.  Next comes all the books that technically belong to other people (like my mother) that I still have to read.

The bottom self is dedicated to books too large to put elsewhere and reference type books.  Starting with my Illustrated Guides to the Star Wars universe, then Star Trek and X-Files companions, then fairy tales, and a children's Bible, and a set of old Household Encyclopedias (which are interesting and hilarious. They include recipes, laundry tips, dog breeding tips, articles on gardening... Everything a housewife needs to know...). Then we move on to my travel section which is all about South Africa with one book on Swaziland. And lastly comes my pet section.

Huh. On second thought, maybe it would be better if I don't include photo's of my other bookshelves.  I seem to get carried away...

Onwards!

Day 211: Magnetic nail polish!

Another prezzy from SisHaw.  You can't see it so clearly in this photo but the nail polish is striped.  What you do, is paint one coat on all your nails.  Then start with the second coat; you paint one nail and immediately hold the little magnet that comes with it over your nail for a few seconds.  And voila! Stripes!  You have to do that finger by finger so it takes a little longer than usual but I think it looks great.  And an added bonus is that this is the best lasting nail polish I have ever had.

Day 212: My Bella shirt.

You know. Coz it's plaid... As one Facebook friend pointed out this is also a bonus photograph of my boobs.  You lucky things.

Day 213: Church Square from another angle. You can see the statue of Paul Kruger looking over his city towards the north.

This is taken from the north, looking south.  The photo of the Square on Day 52 was taken sort of from the south-east.  At least, I think so.  My compass point direction skills are not good.  Anyway, as you can see it was an overcast day.  We've been having a lot of those.  But I love the filter I used because it makes it look like one of the photographs which I've actually seen of the Square from like 30 or 40 years ago.

Day 214: Missing! One sun. Makes periodic appearances just to tease and then disappears again.

Another photo taken with my little BlackBerry that I am very chuffed with. 

It had been such a rainy week, and I was just complaining to my friend, who lives in Pietermaritzburg where they are having a similar problem.  I mean I love rainy days.  I really do.  But I cannot remember the last time we had so much rain during September/October.  We are a summer rainfall area, but it's never been like this.  In fact the last 10 years or so, our really rainy period has been March to May-ish.  And the temperature is crazy cold for the end of the year here in Sunny South Africa.  As I sit typing this, I am wearing winter clothes and have my office heater on.  Again.  On the 9th of November. (I totally had to check that it was Friday.  I nearly panicked)

Day 215: We're booked!

SisHaw and I are all official for the midnight screening of Breaking Dawn on 15/16 November.  It seems they are actually having a 10pm screening as well, but that felt like cheating.

Day 216: Happy Birthday!

The 27th of October was MaHaw's 60th Birthday.  As it fell so close to Halloween, SisHaw and I thought giving it a Halloween theme would be one way of making it memorable.  It was a good evening with friends and family.  What better photo for this day than one of the three Haws?

Day 217: Silly sleepy puppy.

The morning after.  I think Penny was hungover...

Day 218: Happy Gotting-You-Day Sam! 5 years today.

I don't know Sam or Oliver's birthdates.  So we celebrate their Gotting-You-Day's instead.  Sam's is a particularly special day.  You see, in August 2009 Sam went missing.  I know, cats wander.  But Sam doesn't.  Sam is a stay-at-home-preferably-in-one-spot-all-the-time-don't-make-me-go-outside cat.  She has issues.  Most people will say she's not a very nice cat.  One of those people might be me.  I will say she was a horrible kitten.  She's not friendly or cuddly and she shouts and cusses at me every day.  But she loves me and I love her.  We understand each other, or at least I understand her most of the time and she appreciates that.  There are occasions where she cuddles me; she will climb on top of me, snuggle down, and gently put her paw on my face, and that there is her saying she loves me.  I better not move though.  I love Sam, and when she didn't show up for supper that day, I basically knew she was dead.  She's a home cat, she does not explore, there is nothing that would keep her away past supper time.  We searched and searched, and I put up flyer's everywhere.  I couldn't just give up even though deep down I had.  Sam needed me.  She is not an outside cat with street smarts. 

She was gone for 17 days.  Possibly the worst 17 days of my life.  Every evening I would go out to the front, and then to the back of the house to call her, just in case.  There was nothing more that I could do, but I could keep doing that.  Honestly, after 17 days, what was the point?  But I did it every night, breaking down in tears every time.  On the 17th night I'd left it pretty late.  I got up and went out the back and called.  Nothing.  I went out the front and called.  Nothing.  As I was locking the front door, I thought I heard something, but do you know how often I thought I had heard her during those 17 days?  Then I heard it again.  I flew outside and started calling again and then I saw her running to me.  (I may be getting teary writing this)  I burst into tears and scooped her up in my arms.  This was late at night, and I have no idea what the neighbours must have thought but I didn't care.  I held her so tight and she barely struggled even though she doesn't like it.  I took her to the kitchen, sobbing the entire time and gave her food.  I then proceeded to sit on the kitchen floor and ugly-cry while phoning my Mom to tell her Sam was home.  And she was fine.  A bit thin but fine. I have no idea where she went or how she managed to get back home but I am so grateful.  I try to remember this every time she cusses at me loudly when I don't feed her on time.

Day 219: Happy 91st Birthday GranHaw!

October is just full of birthdays!  GranHaw is PopHaw's mommy and is your typical cuddly granny.  You know, the one who bakes and lets you get away with anything?  I don't see her nearly often enough since I moved.

Day 220: HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

All of my awesome Halloween duckies came from my awesome friend Worm, all the way from America!  She sent me about 67 rubber duckies, and these are all the Halloween ones!

I had a fantastic Halloween. It's not so big here, yet, so there are no Trick or Treat interruptions.  It was a cold rainy evening, so I bathed, snuggled under a blanket with some pumpkin soup and sweets, and proceeded to read horror Twilight fanfiction, listen to my Halloween playlist (which I had made for MaHaw's birthday party) and tweet all the songs that were playing.  Perfect.

Day 221: Post Halloween stash.

This stash actually lasted a lot longer than anticipated.  In fact, I still have a few lollipops.

Day 222: Waiting for car repairs...

Because expensive and important things always break when all the money is gone.  This time, it was a brakespring...?

Day 223: Almost Married!

For more on this, go here.

Day 224: How could I not make this my photo of the day?

I know, I know I post a lot of photographs of my herd.  But really, when they do things like this, what am I supposed to do?  I feel I should apologise for the amount of pet photographs, but I'm not going to.

Day 225: Jacaranda adorned driveway.

The Jacaranda's are in bloom once again in the Jacaranda City (as Pretoria is known because of the sheer number of these trees within the city).  Everything looks so pretty and purple I can't promise you won't get more Jacaranda photos.

This the driveway of the property on which my house is situated and I get to drive through this every day for a few weeks every year!

Day 226: THEY CAME THEY CAME! THEY FINALLY CAME!!!!

Lori sent me these new editions of her books, with the newly designed covers, months and months and months ago.  But they never arrived.  And the transport strike over here did not help.  We were so worried that Lori contacted the company and they promised they'd send a new set.  Now either these are those, or the originals finally found their way to me, and there is another set on the way...

Aren't they pretty? Don't you just wanna read em?!?!

Day 227: Murderous ants. And very hardworking.

May I just say that this is a hell of a thing for one to witness first thing in the morning while one is brushing one's teeth...

Day 228: CheeseHaw cooking a kiddie! Meet Sprog. Sprog is part Vulcan...

...as is clear from it's ears.

Everyone is very excited although PopHaw is disappointed that no where seems to make racing suits or helmets for under 3 year old....


That's all for now, folks!

FanFiction

A word on FanFiction: DON'T DO IT.  My world was fine until I discovered fanfiction. I read books, real books.  Now, I cannot stop with the fanfiction.  Its all Twilight's fault of course (most things are, I find).  I still don't understand the fascination with that saga, although I, myself, suffer from it.  And now... fanfiction.  I am managing to stay away from other themes and am sticking to the Twilight fic.  Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing I don't know, but I figure I don't need to get hooked on, say, The Sound of Music Fanfiction.  One theme is enough, thank you! 

So. Now that's off my chest I'm gonna do a rec.  I could recommend a lot. But I won't, I'll just rec one. This time. 

Some fanfic is not that great. With some, the story idea is great, but the writing crap.  With others, the writing is very good, and the idea, not so much.  With some, the silly grammatical errors annoy you so much YOU JUST WANNA SCREAM. Or maybe thats just me.  Sometimes, if you're lucky you'll get an excellent merging of idea and writing skill.  Ok, after writing that now I have to rec 2 stories:

The first is Within These Walls, by HeartofDarkness & Totteacher.  This story explores how Alice came to be in a mental asylum and consequently changed into a vampire.  Its not very long, and is complete.  For some reason this story has not got many reviews, and its well written and interesting to read.  Other fics have thousands of reviews and are badly written and rather boring (perhaps the reviews are flaming ones, but then that's just mean).  Anyway I really enjoyed this and feel it should be paid more attention.

The other story is Prelude in C, which is again a canon fic, focusing on how Carlisle and Edward came together.  This story is excellently written, and is only the second fic by the author, AllTheOtherNamesAreUsed.  It is not complete, but is updated regularly.  The following for this fic seems to be growing and it has been nominated for a few fic awards.  The Edward is REALLY well written and I find myself hardly ever wanting to slap him, so there's that.  The imagery is lovely and you really get caught up in the characters.

There are alot of other fics I could recommend.  Some are All Human stories with disturbing but compelling themes, some are just fluff.  Fluff has its place.  I've already mentioned MotU in a previous post.  My favorite All Human are Wide Awake by AngstGoddess003 and Emancipation Proclamation by kharizzmatik.  My favourite supernatural/alternate universe fic is Osa Bella by Myg. 

There's lots more but that's enough now.  Can I just say that the really good stories would be REALLY good even if the names Bella and Edward (or any of the others) were not used.  Sometimes its really the story that's interesting and gets you thinking, without the Twilight connection being necessary at all.

But enough about that now. Have a good July :)