Although I can’t pull off a “s’up” or wear baggy trousers round my bum, I am, in fact, old school.

Old school geek and social networker, that is.

Until the age of 8 (or 1982) I spent most of my time outdoors, playing with legos, drawing, creating forts and reading. But then a friend of the family who was an engineer got a Commodore 64 and while the parents talked politics after dinner, I sat and hacked away at that thing. In 1984 my school bought a couple of Apple II computers, one of which I ended up hogging for hours on end and staying after school so that I could code and code to make that little turtle move around and make pretty things.

After a couple of years of pestering my parents for a computer, “a compu-what?” my father took me to some office supply warehouse where a man began to talk to my father about what he had in stock. My father stopped the man, pointed to me and said, “You need to talk to her.” The salesman looked at me; the littlest, blondest girl in the biggest dress you ever saw wanted to talk floppy drives, memory and modem speed. I was so incredibly proud when I put in an order for some hacked together PC-clone. A month later we picked it up and I began coding games and small programs in DOS Basic between going to school, building forts in the forrest and putting dresses on Barbies.

In 1986 I discovered local BBS (bulletin board systems) in which you’d use your modem (at the time, 300 baud) to connect to another modem that hosted a site so you could talk to people. This was pre-world wide web days. Most of the people I talked to were guys who were outcasts because they were geeks. It wasn’t yet cool or lucrative. In fact, one tended to be rather quiet about owning a computer or worse yet, being a modemmer! Yet these geeks taught me a lot about computers and coding and, since they were local, about connecting the virtual world to a real one. I started arranging local meet-ups for us from playing sports on the weekend to attending special events. I didn’t think being online had to be separate from the real world.

Over the next few years I kept progressing with coding and modem speed (oh, a 1200 baud modem! A 2400 baud modem! Oh my, not a 9600 baud modem!!). In the early nineties something new was being pioneered; it was when a central computer would hook up to another computer somewhere else in the world. No longer did you have to settle for local geeks – you could go international! I began making friends in New Zealand, in the Caymans, in Italy and I learned the true meaning of “social networking.”

Around 1992 I stopped using a computer all together when I began my travels and it wasn’t until 1995 when I visited a friend in Vancouver did I see where the world of computers and modems had gone too. There was now Windows 95 to make computing easy and hardrives that held more space than those floppies ever could. Computers were becoming more mainstream yet the web still had a ways to go. There was, however, a new development in connecting – IRC Chat. And I hopped on there from time to time, chatting with family and old friends and meeting new ones. I really liked this idea and decided to build a quick and permanent way for people to know me and connect.

So in 1995, using my friend’s computer, I put up my very first web page (seen above). I used Netscape Navigator and hosted it on their site. I put things up that were important – photos, about me, a diary to keep people updated and an email link. Because the web was relatively new I didn’t understand how people could find me (I thought you had to tell them the web site address) and that it could go to anyone in the world with a modem. I thought just my few close friends would read it. Little did I know. (more…)

I didn’t grow up with a television and have never owned one as an adult. The reason for this is quite simple: I’m very guarded about what comes into my life because if I’m not, the wrong things can easily take over.

For example, a few years ago my friend, who also had always lacked a television, and I had a girly weekend at the Ritz in Los Angeles – Club Level. At our disposal was a spa, swimming pool, trails, bikes, and privy to Club Level, a lounge with several (free) food servings each day. We had a sprawling two-room suite with an amazing balcony that had an unbelievable view. And in our room were two of the largest Sony televisions we had ever seen.

Since we’d both gone without TV, we turned one on and showing was the story of a 500lb man on the Discovery Channel. We. Could. Not. Stop. Watching. We said during commercials we’d go out once the show was over but that didn’t happen. For the two tonne twins came up after that. And after that was some other show on obesity.

After three hours I turned off the tv as with both laid lifeless on the bed.

“Do you want to ride bikes now?” I asked.

“No, I don’t feel like it. What about swimming?”

“I can’t get into my bikini! I feel fat!”

We had become so absorbed by other peoples lives that we were unable to lead our own despite the fact we were in one of the most incredible settings for the sole purpose of having fun.

So that is why there is a lack of TV in my home and always has been. This has, at times in certain groups, made me somewhat of a social outcast in America since so many references and inside jokes seem to be TV lines (it was only a year ago thanks to YouTube I got the whole “No soup for you” thing). But I get away with not knowing a lot because I didn’t grow up in America and because I actually know more than I should by paying attention to all the conversations that people have about pop culture (I can tell you a surprising about of random TV facts).

The point is, I’ve managed really well without TV in a TV world. Then I realised that my TV was the Internet and that was bombarding me and my subconscious far too much without any useful benefit. It was, instead of me feeling inspired and creative, was making me feel like I was watching bad television and feeling unfit to do anything about it afterwards.

Since being online since 1995 I’ve seen all the trends of the web world and have been a part of a lot of them. I’ve been web famous several times (it comes and goes), created lots of communities, hung out with the geeks, the cool kids and followed all the web pages, news and dish that’s gone along with it.

It wasn’t until over a year ago that I began to really question the internet and how it affected me. The internet and I were in one of those tumultuous relationships where we’d break up then makeup with fervor. We were codependent yet I’d never thought to ask why since I figured it had to be in my life – since most of it seemed to have replaced my life.

But last year I was recruited by a company to build community for its sites by writing content and connect people I knew (writers, artists, leaders in their industries) to the sites. I was suspicious but not enough to say no; I loved a challenge, I loved the idea of doing what I did on a bigger scale and I loved the idea more of helping people I knew get more exposure.

However I quickly learned that the company was more about page count than useful content. They wanted to be the “biggest distributer of content” on the internet – even if it was (by their own admission) very bad content. They wanted page views and sign ups which in my opinion, is not community. It didn’t get people helping people and it didn’t get people living life. IAnd in my efforts I was being asked to abuse personal and professional relationships that took me years to develop for their sites and gain but not for that of the writers or the community. Instead of being a voice of service in verticals I was passionate about and helping people I knew gain exposure, I quickly became a high-paid talent manager for bad sites and disgruntled friends.

After a lot of internal discussion to get my job to be like the actual job description I wrote when I agreed to come on and the company doing everything they could to keep me from doing that description, I realised that the company didn’t work the way I did and I had to quit.

And that left me to wonder, where in the web world do I belong?

(more…)

When I attended a BlogHer panel today I left really, really frustrated Both the panel and the audience, and perhaps rightly so, seemed to be very “grrrrl.” Everyone seemed to reflect each other both in dress and in speech and it everyone seemed to be just so focused on the pain of women, how women writers need to tag everything they do as “women” and how we need to kick some ass (ours! theirs!) and get angry at not being “equal” or as perceived as smart as men because lord knows we’re better. There was an energy in the room that for me was really uncomfortable. It was as though everyone was just riled up and angry at anything not “grrrl” oriented. In talking to a several people after about it, I wasn’t the only one that picked up on it. But then, none of the people I spoke to were “grrrls” (actually, a lot of them were really hot women who held engineering jobs in Google and Yahoo. Their openness made you want to talk to them. Their brains made you want to listen).

Despite having the word “girl” in many of my site and creating sites based on women and for women, it has never, ever been at the expense of men. I do not feel the need to be “PRO WOMAN” to get ahead. I get along fine with the fella’s, can talk business and smack with the best of them, and am taken seriously too. It’s why with almost every site (even the ones “geared” towards women), my readership is always almost 60% female and 40% male. I tend to do things universal because I just believe we’re all here to connect. And I don’t care if you’re in a dress, pants, blue hair or blonde. It’s what is interesting and useful to me that counts and not defining myself in a small group to try to gain power.

(more…)

A little tootin’ of the horn here, but today it was announced that the site I created, Girls Guide to City Life is a finalist in the “blog” catagory for the 9th Annual SXSW Interactive Web Awards! This is my second nomination (the last one was in 2003) and I’m so thrilled and excited.

If you’re going to be at SXSW this year, let me know as I’ll be there from the 11-14th.

Alsom if you have a moment, please check out Girls Guide to City Life and then vote for it for a People’s Choice for the 2006 SXSW Web Awards. It’d make me happier than a pony named pepper.

I realise there’s only been a handful of entries this year and that the site has been down more than up. It’s been somewhat intentional by the fact I’ve found myself less and less involved, inspired and in-love with the online world. It’s become a bunch of blah, blah, blah lately. Boring. Myself included.

For the past several months I haven’t read people’s blogs or personal bits and for good reason – I don’t want to know people’s lives by their blog lines. I’ve actually had friends whose response to the “How are you doing” question be, “well you can read it on my web site.” For me, that doesn’t work.

There’s become an assumption that everyone reads everyone’s blogs and people write and live for others now. Have an experience? One must blog about how fucking fantastic the pizza was or how Jimmy broke up with me or how things fell apart again but I’m going to pick myself right back up!

It’s strange to me how a lot of people who write and read personal blogs do so religiously – almost obsessively – and tend to assume that everyone does it, knows about it, participates in it, too. These people tend to forget there’s a whole world out there that doesn’t know blogspot.com or what’s going around or who they newest it person is. Some people feel that if they don’t record their experience on their blog it didn’t really happen and others feel if they don’t comment on those experiences they’ll never get noticed. People and things tend get blown way out of proportion in blogs and blogging life. Some minions hitting a site several times a day can make some blog creators feel like rock stars and then the whole slippery slope starts there.

It’s not bitterness that drives this post, honestly, though I understand some people will think so or think this a rant just because it’s not filled with something uplifting, personal or cute. And when a post lacks those things it’s often met with anger, hostility, and desertion – another things that’s a little sad about the online world as of late. Sometimes one just has to make statements based on observations that have no personal feeling involved (I’m neither upset, angry, bitter nor happy about it. It just is what it is). After 10 years of writing on a personal web site, I’ve seen changes happen and the whole personal web evolve. And what it’s evolved into is something I just don’t really care too much for at the moment.

In fact, I tend to think personal blogging has become more like reality TV – it started off real, with good intentions, shedding light in areas never seen before but now it’s all scripted, managed and carefully created to maintain an image, popularity and standing. Everyone wants to be liked, measures their worth by comments and emails and if they said the latest thing that gets people talking.

It’s my strong belief that one can’t really connect online nor can one find answers to how to really lead a life. To find the answer, the direction one must go is offline and just live within themselves for awhile, without trying to figure out how to write it for others or how to respond to their favourite so they can be in the clique too. One must go offline and just experience – live, try, do, with the only worry being how they feel at the end of the day – not how they can blog about it. And one can’t find answers just by reading self-help web sites or by reading others having experiences – vicarious living is not living. No one has your answers.

P.S. I should like to note that sites that are about information and ideas, I find that useful and interesting despite not keeping up to date with them all and that I do know that not all the web and not all personal sites are crap. There’s actually some really good ones. Some examples? Voila

P.P.S. How do I fit into all of this? No bloody idea.

One of the biggest motivating lines I’ve heard parents use on their children for obtaining a “good life” is, if you don’t study hard, you’ll end up just a garbage man. Hearing that line always makes me cringe.

In the summer of 1996 I lived in the West End of Vancouver, Canada. A charming, well-kept neighbourhood that bordered the beach, Stanly Park and the downtown corridor. Living there was brilliant – and desired. It’s vacancy rate has always held at under 1%.

But that summer, it became a not so dreamy place to live when the Garbage Men went on strike. At first, nobody felt anything. However, after a week or two, when garbage overflowed every dumpster, the alleys and streets smelt so bad and our once pristine area was dirtier than you could ever imagine, people were calling up their local garbage men, pleading for them to go back to work.

It’d take them two months and in during those two months, anyone who lived in or visited the West End learned how important a Garbage Man was.

It’s always bothered me in America how there is this push for University and becoming something. Don’t get me wrong – I totally support education, learning and being the best you can be. What I don’t support is the idea that University and being a CEO is all that there is and everyone has to go that route because if they don’t, they’ll be nothing more than a garbage man and who wants that?

I think that kind of thinking is unfair to those who want or have more basic jobs – jobs we need. If you want to be a plumber, I don’t think you need four years in University; you need a trade school. If you want to just work retail, then some courses and experience might serve you best. Isn’t high school supposed to teach you a lot, prepare you in some way? I don’t think it does in America that much considering how people say here it isn’t worth anything nowadays.

If education is supposed to be something everyone ought to do, why is it so expensive? Why isn’t it free? If education is important, if becoming a better person is important, why don’t the rates drop? Why are parents told to start saving for their child’s university when they’re a baby? It doesn’t make sense.

I’ve seen a lot of people go through university who come out only knowing how to pass tests and do the minimum to graduate. They’re often not any smarter, happier or more in touch with what to do with their lives. They go in on automatic pilot and come out just as confused – but with a sense they are somehow better than somehow who didn’t go.

Oh, I know this isn’t the case with every graduate but I don’t see why people are looked down on for not going to university, for being a garbage man, or a teller, or a clerk. We need those services so why look down on the people who do them?

(more…)

Someone emailed me awhile ago and, after awhile, I replied. They replied to my reply astonished that a web celebrity wrote them back. This statement literally made my jaw drop. We’re talking sweet baby jesus having to come in and close it.

I’ve heard that term used a lot for me and cheekily used it on a portfolio site once to see if it’d actually have any meaning – it doesn’t. But I still don’t get the whole web-celebrity thing. Especially for me because in the last 2.5 years, I’ve made only 80 posts. That’s not a lot of updating and, in my opinion, shouldn’t interest 90,000 every day.

The web, I’m finding, is a lot like highschool. There’s cliques and cool kids, groupies and minions. There’s groups of people who get lumped together and who’s posts start all sounding the same. You know what I’m talking about. There’s commenters (people who make a career at posting at 3+ blogs per day) who want so badly to be noticed by the cool kids. The cool kids then feed off the commenters, wanting to get more commenters to remain cool kids. It’s a weird cycle. Weird man.

I’ve never thought of myself in these terms. I’ve had a web page for almost 10 years and just kind of do my thing. Sometimes I rock at it, sometimes I royally suck. Eh, what can you do?

I tend not to know the latest terminology, the latest web page gadgets, I don’t have comments and I don’t post daily. I just used the phrase I have a blog for the first time last month. I’m so not cool by any means and have very little idea how people view me (especially now since all email is down and I don’t snoop for dish on me). So it’s just strange, weird, surprising to have people think that I’m some kind of blogging rock star, when in fact, I just type a little and hit upload.

It’s only been one week since everything started. One week. It feels like an eternity. I have flipped my world upside-down. I have given up security, sanity and life as I know it. And right now, I’m not too sure what to make of it all.

The weekend of the 7/8th Chris & I had taken a train trip to Vancouver and stayed overnight for a little get away. That’s when I had come to the decision to quit my job and become a writer. I had given my notice on Monday to my boss, the President, and he told me to keep it quiet. He said to me, “I’m not sure what to tell people is the reason why you’re leaving.” I said, “You can tell them it’s because I’m going to write.” He said, “No, that doesn’t make sense.”

All week long I wanted to take my resignation back. I thought, what the hell am I doing? I make a lot of money. I can buy anything, go anywhere, do anything. I contribute to my savings. I have a place to go to everyday, I know what I’m doing. I’m really good at my job. I actually like a lot of people there. Why am I walking away from all this when I have no idea what I’m walking to?

I asked myself all that over and over because I was filled with such self doubt – it was almost unbearable. Any euphoria I had felt over releasing that I need to live my passion was short lived. All I could think of was that I was making the biggest mistake of my life.

So I decided on Friday the 13th to take a trip up to Vancouver by myself to go and stay with my friend, just so I could be alone and clear my head and get centred. She’s 57, very creative, extremely interesting and completely compassionate. She listened to me talk about my uncertainty and over a mocha and popcorn she said, “You must give it a try. If one does not succeed, that does not mean failure. No… look at all the wonderful singers and artists that are out there, some made it big others did not and that does not mean that they failed. They lived truly, and that is never failure. Being an unhappy executive is, no matter how much money you make. I applaud you for wanting to write. One has to be happy in what one does. I really believe that, more so now, that I am more grown up. There is so much to do and see and WRITE. Go for it, if you do not, you will grow old and say I should have.” I hugged her and told her Thank you, that’s what I needed.

Then today, word got out to the Senior Managers that I had resigned last week. The President had told them to keep it quiet for now, despite the fact that this Friday is my last day. My boss felt if word got out that I was leaving, moral would get even lower and confidence in the company would vanish. When he said that, it reminded me of how good I am at my current job, and how central I am to the company. I thought about my employees that I supervise and manage and how they think I’m the best boss ever. I thought about all the people I support and projects and tradeshows I do and manage. And now I have to tell people, “Sorry, you’re on your own.” I started to feel guilty.

When the Senior Managers would approach me today they’d ask me why I was leaving. “Are you getting more money somewhere else?” was always the first thing. “No,” I’d say, “I’m going to write.” “Write what?” “I’m not sure right now.” “What? You mean you don’t have a job to go to?”

It was so strange getting their reactions. Actually most of them were really supportive and said “good for you” and I got the sense that they wish they could go chase their dream. But still, it was awkward. There is a lot of people I haven’t told yet because I haven’t been allowed to, and I know their reactions will be negative. Some people have a hard time dealing with others success, ambition, or happiness. Jealousy can be a real bitch.

So, for the past week I’ve just been dealing with finishing up work, reactions (both mine and others) and just basically trying to get through each day. It’s hard. Living your dream is really hard work, which is why, I suspect, most people do not ever live theirs.

I’m not, however, most people. I’m going to chase mine, hard. Even if nothing big ever comes of it, I have to try. I have to know. I’ve asked myself all the what if questions this past week like “What if I don’t make money,” “what if I get lazy” “what if I end up like (some girl whose name I’ll blank out for her privacy) who has talent but sits on her ass all day afraid of the world” “what if I really don’t have talent” but I figured the only what if question that really mattered was “what if I don’t try this.”

What if.