Flashback Friday ... except on a Saturday

This is (as I hope you can tell!) my blog, circa Tuesday night. I have been blogging since before "blogging" was even a thing or a company (1998) & I came of age on the internet. I think about this often, especially now that I've returned to the blogging world after many years away to find the landscape, as well as myself, irrevocably altered.

I often sit in front of the blog and wonder what I'm trying to achieve (not that its that serious, mind you, but I like to think). Its just so different now. No longer am I a completely isolated being, no longer do I pour my heart out hoping that someone will understand me, no longer can I count on my family & friends not reading every single word I write here. I'm not a child, I'm an adult, and adults don't behave like I did back then, during my "coming of age" period, and trust me, that's a very, very good thing. Holden Caulfield would have been totally embarrassed by me, I'll put it that way.

But at the same time, I am so grateful that I barfed my deepest secrets & everyday occurrences on Ye Olde Internet, because now I have an incredibly thorough, albeit mostly embarrassing & totally permanent, chronicle of my life that spans some of the most important, messed up, happy, sad, wild, crazy & totally uncertain times of my life. The best & worst of times, and a lot of overthinking, and yeah, actually, some really beautiful writing. Its good to remind myself that writing was once everything to me, and photography just a glint in my eye.

I've posted about my internet past before, but today I just wanted to share a couple of things from Ye Olde Internet, and I hope you will appreciate just how long ago this was. Dusty internet catacombs, indeed.

1. This lovely little gem is part of a self-portrait series I did with a point & shoot in my San Jose bedroom, circa November 2000. I was 18 years old & had only been interested in photography for 3-4 months. This was the third photo series I did, ever.

Looking back on this is so strange. I remember that girl, so young and self-centered and lost, on the edge all the time. I had left home & moved in with people I'd met on the internet (of course!) about 4 months prior, and thought I had it all figured out. Wasn't it nice at 18 to know everything? Oh, and I was totally also invincible! Yeah, right.

Amber, Alexis, Christina, Zoe, Annalee, Laura // June 2000

2. About a year after I started my serious online journal, lots of shit started to get real in my life, and over the course of my last semester of high school I became a surprisingly good writer. It sounds like I'm boasting, but really, I'm just amazed that I had such talent at seventeen.

I wrote this entry, one of my all-time favorites, on the eve of my graduation from high school. It was an emotional ton of bricks kind of period for me, as you will see when you read the words; the writing is clumsier than normal because I was crying the entire time I wrote it. I had the best, truest group of friends I've ever had those two years I lived in Los Angeles, and those years were raw and incredible. I will never forget those times, or these wonderful friends of mine.

3. I really started getting serious about photography in 2003. Here, to the right, is one of the first shots I ever took that I felt represented some level of artistic talent & beauty.

It was taken July 7th, 2003, on a nature walk/photo excursion to Sausal Creek in the east bay. I was really into visiting local parks at the time, and taking pictures, and seeing nature, because of a very inspiring hippie chick I'd met on Livejournal (she was a hardcore freegan, dumpster-diving nature loving alterna-girl, and as much as I did not agree with her dumpster-diving habit, I did pick up her love of local parks).


I could go on for a long time with these, as the internet has been my diary for half my life now (whoa), but I'll stop there for now. I love going back and remembering the little things that made me, me. ★