Beyond Selidor

Day 3. Where have you been spending your time lately? Three/Five/Ten years ago would you have expected to be there?

Inevitably, I missed a day. So you all have the joy of getting two posts within a few minutes of one another.

I have been spending a lot of time on the internet recently. (I am ignoring the fact that I, for all intents and purposes, don't have internet at home and thus am spending a lot LESS time on the internet than usual. In general, on average, I am spending a lot of time on the internet.)

Three years ago I would not have been the slightest bit surprised. Five or ten years ago I would've been shocked and disgusted at myself.

I was born in the 80s, and am thus a 90s child who grew up without the internet, and then all of a sudden it was there. (It was obviously more gradual than that, but because I literally had not heard of the internet until the first year of high school, and then suddenly everyone was talking about it, and using it with increasing frequency, I had that perception.) I was massively technophobic (I blame this partly on incompetent technology classes at school and partly on my own nature, which is resistant to change), and, without ever spending more than, at most, an hour a week online (mostly checking emails; remember this was pre-Google and pre-Wikipedia), I formed an extremely negative opinion of what the internet was like.

'It's so dehumanising!' I cried dramatically. 'It gives people a false sense of connection when in reality they're becoming more and more distant and disconnected from one another!'

And then 2007 happened.

I had the sense, somewhere amid all the unhappiness that was fogging up my mind, to remember some forum that I'd joined way back in 2003 after idly Googling 'His Dark Materials fansite'. And wow am I grateful I did! From day one the sraffies welcomed me with open arms. Pretty soon, I was breaking every internet rule I'd ever been told by scaremongerers: I told people my name. I told people where I lived. I posted photos of myself. I met people (my first srafcon was with a then 15-year-old lucubratae, and it was basically a four-hour-long geekfest. With awesome food and tea) in real life. I poured my heart out to these people, and they actually listened.

And when I was in a better state of mind, I did exactly the same for them.

Over the years, I've got to know the sraffies better and better. Since moving to the UK, I've met more and more of them in real life (20 at the last count), and I even was in a relationship with one of them for a little while, but I refuse to accept that the 'real life' meetings somehow make the friendships more legitimate, that our online interactions are somehow suspect and not real friendship.

I've celebrated university offers and graduations, births and marriages, the beginnings of relationships and new jobs with them. I've cried with them over deaths, bad luck and bad choices. I've laughed the hardest I've ever laughed in my life with them. We've helped one another with our school and uni work, edited job applications for one another, fixed technological problems for one another. I've watched TV with them, listened to music with them, read books with them, talked about everything from philosophical musings on how language arises to mock battles between vampire and werewolf armies. We have our own language and modes of speech.

We have held each other when we screamed, and danced with each other in sheer joy. They saw me at my worst and stuck around. If that's not real friendship, I don't know what is. Tell me again why my internet friendships aren't valid, and I'll show you the millions of words that thelxiepia have poured out to one another over the past four years. I love her as much as I love my own sisters.

______________________________________________________
*Note: I sometimes feel that when I praise the sraffies, it comes across as being a bit critical of my real-life friends who were around me at the time. I know a lot of them would have helped if they had known there was a problem, but I tried to hide what was going on (all the while getting more and more resentful that they WEREN'T NOTICING MY PAIN, OH MY GOD (because depression is logical like that)). It's impossible to help someone if she won't let you, so what I'm saying shouldn't be read as a condemnation of my real-life friends, who are all extremely compassionate and empathetic people.


Day 4. What do you think it means to be in love?
Day 5. Pick a song that projects the same mood as your day or week and explain.
Day 6. Talk about a recent experience that has affected you greatly and how.
Day 7. Think of the last person you hugged. What would you do if they vanished completely?
Day 8. Write about the first moment that comes to your head when you read the words “childhood memory”
Day 9. Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
Day 10. Did you have a good day or a bad day? Where do you think that defining line was?
Day 11. Do you feel protective over someone?
Day 12. If you could trade places with anyone for one week, who would it be and why?
Day 13. Where do you see your best friend in 10 years?
Day 14. When you are stressed, what can you use as an outlet? Why do you think it helps you?
Day 15. What do you believe in? And not just God or atheism.
Day 16. What are you passionate about?
Day 17. Who was the last person you kissed? (If you are still with them now, pick the person before them.) What would they say if they saw you now?
Day 18. Talk about your extended family. Why do you think they are the way they are?
Day 19. If you could be anywhere in the world, but you had to be there for a certain cause, where would you be and why?
Day 20. Again, pick a song that projects the mood of your week or day.
Day 21. Look back. Why did you choose this challenge? Do you think it says anything about you?
Day 22. How do you think people see you? Be a little negative and a little positive.
Day 23. Explain your life plan for the next month, then the next year, then three years, then five years.
Day 24. Are you more social or independent? Why do you think that is?
Day 25. What do you think it means to be a good parent?
Day 26. Talk about a moment where you were truly happy. What was happening? Who were you with?
Day 27. Is there a friend you are worried about? Why do they have you concerned? Do you think they’ll be okay?
Day 28. Would you rather someone tell you the truth up front but gently, or be lied to to spare your feelings?
Day 29. If you could be doing the same things you do now, only in your own way, how would a normal day in your life go?
Day 30. Look back on this last month and talk about it.