The First Time

The First Time can never be recreated.


Many years ago, in a florescent-lit computer lab, a friend of mine installed a basic web server pacakge on a spare 286 we had in the back. I edited HTML on an IBM AT and photos in Graphic Converter on a Macintosh Color Classic. Later, on my Quadra, I'd do more ofthe same and post to an Austin-based ISP. These early works weren't weblogging as we know it today, but they were attempts to express myself through technology and obtain some life-saving career skills.

I sort of miss those days, though I have recreated the ambience with my laptop, my wireless hub, and my guile-less blog-hosting site. Of couse, I don't miss those days, empty nights rather, peering at a screen and writing about my thoughts, my feelings, as if my only communion with my interior life could be facilitated with a Motorola 68040 processor and a 14,400 modem.

But I kept at it. When I moved, I thought the web was the best way to make my life available to mass numbers of people. Instead of sending a letter - how intrusive, to assume people wanted to read about my life - I could send a link, inviting them to read about my adventures on their own time.

Then came the crash, and job hunting, and consulting, and triphopping across the east village in search of something interesting. Then talking heads discovered blogging, there was money to be made and there were opinions to be shaped, and suddenly, blogging meant something completely different than throwing a few files onto a chubby little 286 in a university closet and sharing an obscurely annotated link with a few friends.

So. This is my first time with blogspot. I hope it works out, bringing convenience and ease to my once handcrafted work. I hope it works out better than the blogging applications I've tried - too finicky and hard to manage, I find. Here's hoping that if it can't be like the first time, that at least the good parts can be easily reproduced.