I’ve been online in some form since 1996. My parents had a loud desktop PC that made a whirring sound akin to a plane taking off if you left it on for too long. I remember the dial-up modem, the button beeps, a brief pause while it connected, and the glorious grinding sound it made when it, at last, connected to the internet. I was thirteen. Shortly after I learned how to e-mail, I taught myself HTML using a library book and Notepad. I uploaded my junior high and high school angst chronicles via FTP. Blogging, if you will, before it had a name.

Hotmail
I had all of the energy of any caffeinated, small-town preteen unleashed on the internet and no one with whom to correspond. I did have the best usernames though. froggirl44 and blueribbon7, for example.

Angelfire
OH, LOOK! A collection of personal websites with neon green background and bright red fonts. My people!

Geocities
If you’re old enough to remember Geocities, you will remember that each community had a topic and a neighborhood. I set up shop in Wellesley, obviously, as a fifteen year old poet that wanted to shun boys for not noticing me. It was before I learned border=0 on img code so every graphic had a ghastly blue box around it, including the spinning earth .gif and the lava lamp. I would lay on my bedroom floor and listen to Prince. No one understands me. I used Verdana size eight with a religious fervor. The smaller the text in my posts, the more seriously I meant it. He really hadn’t seen me in the hallway. CAN YOU NOT FEEL MY PAIN? Be sure to sign my guestbook.de before you leave.

Tripod
So beautiful, until they added banner ads.

Xoom
So beautiful, until they added banner ads.

SimpleNet
No free web service can sustain the amount of midi files I need to memorialize for all time. I mean, this Celine Dion song is gold.

MY OWN DOMAIN AND EMPIRE
Because I know the sheer power of archive.org and value my dignity, I must not name it. I owned a .org domain for two years and hosted all my sensitive fan girl friends on it. Sub-domains had to be super tortured, like /runaway, /uninvited (a nod to Alanis, obvi), etc. My friends and I had quite the following. Towards the end, a few people at my high school got wind of my online identity. Frick. Delete. Many of the girls that I met online in these years are still my very close friends. The difference is that we are now women and I know all of them in real life too. Oh, and most of our problems are actually real now, for better or for worse.

Livejournal
Yes, I installed my own mood theme. Little Mermaid, if you must know. I’m a late bloomer.

NeverNiche.com
My blog about getting out of debt, getting fitter and experimenting with sobriety. Most posts reek of unintended self-righteousness. Swiftly discover that coming off as a a thin (fit), cheap (frugal), sober (attempting) gal is really alienating and annoying. Decide to close the domain as it wasn’t an accurate portrayal of all things Bear of Clare.

ClareYouThere.com
Here we are. I’m all grow’ed up. Sniff.

To the prickly majority that like to micro-tweet (I’m inventing words now) and espouse, “Blogging is dead,” you do realize you’re basically saying, “No one is interested in what other people write / think / believe / want to do anymore,” right? No? Bye.

Blog on, comrades. If you’re sad, feel free to use a really small font.