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I Quit!

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So…I quit my job on Monday.

 

…Okay, that makes it sound a lot more dramatic than it really was. As much as I’d love an opportunity to yell, “I quit!” and storm out of someplace angrily, that’s not what happened here. In reality, I accepted a new job and quietly gave my two weeks’ notice.

 

Since it’s generally not a good idea to blog about looking for a new job while you currently HAVE a job, I’ve kept quiet about the job search here. But in reality, I’ve been contemplating a career change for a long time. I thought about leaving a couple of times prior to this, but every time I did, a really good reason to stay came along. Like I was going to make my number. And then I was going to make my number again. And then I got offered a free trip to Grand Cayman. (Yep. I’m quitting the company that just sent me to Grand Cayman.)

 

Finally out of reasons to stay, I started job searching. I’d been thinking about moving out of higher ed publishing and into…higher ed. Research showed me that there were plenty of jobs out there for which I was qualified and that paid as much or more than my current job. And since this is Boston, where there are so many colleges that I can’t think of all of them off the top of my head, jobs in higher education are not exactly scarce. I applied, I went on interviews, and I eventually accepted a job in faculty affairs at a university in the area.

 

The job offer came, funnily enough, on my eight-year anniversary at this company. It’s so weird to think that I have been at this company for EIGHT YEARS. So much has happened since then. My first year at this company, I was twenty-three and so broke that I spent months looking forward to my first business trip. After that trip, I also got to go, for the first time, to Philadelphia, Chicago, DC, St. Louis, Savannah, Atlanta, Cincinnati, and, of course, Grand Cayman, among other places. I met so many awesome people, many of whom have also left by now. I gained confidence, especially after being promoted from my first job quicker than I ever dreamed I would. I had a lot of success working in SALES—if you told me in college that one day not only I’d work in sales but become one of the company’s top salespeople, I would have said you were crazy. And there have been a lot of good times: crazy holiday party stories, hanging out in bars after work, playing on our terrible (but fun) softball team, the sales meetings in various cities (including that one time we were almost two days late and my luggage went missing), getting to know a host of new coworkers after a big merger, and Obama’s first inauguration, when, after realizing we’d have a hard time watching it in the building, basically the whole office got up and migrated to the restaurant on the corner to watch it there. This company has been such a huge part of my life for so long that it’s going to be really weird to work anywhere else.

 

There are a lot of reasons I’m leaving, none of which have anything to do with the people at my company. I won’t go into all of them, but the simple version is that, while I’m glad I made the move to sales almost four years ago, I did so because I wanted to move up within the company, and that is no longer a goal of mine. Education is something I’m passionate about, and I realized that working in higher education in some capacity would be a good fit for me. I don’t know exactly what my future holds career-wise, but, although I did have a panicky OH NO WHAT HAVE I DONE moment after I resigned, I hope I’ll enjoy my new job and the people I work with there and that it will open up some great opportunities for me.

 

Right now feels like the right time for a change. So I’ll take it.

Pete Campbell Dance

Heaven and Hell…Aka Grand Cayman

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Okay, I’m finally going to write about the Grand Cayman trip. Here we go.

 

I found on New Year’s Eve that I’d been chosen to attend my company’s CEO Summit. Essentially, I had two good sales years where I made my goal, which, by some measurement of performance over time, placed me in the top 10% of sales professionals company-wide. I’m not quite sure how that happened, but if the result is a free trip to Grand Cayman, I don’t really care.

 

Everyone could bring a guest, so, since I don’t get to see her nearly enough, I asked Christina. She was going to be in Boston the preceding weekend anyway for her sister’s graduation, so she stayed in Boston a night longer. This was during the two weeks post-fire when I wasn’t in the sublet yet, so we got a hotel room near the airport. I figured out how to stream the Mad Men finale online (even though we had to be up super early for our 6 AM flight the next day, there was no way I was missing it), and the next morning we were off.

 

I knew the trip was going to go well when we got to the hotel and, within about five minutes, someone handed us a free rum punch.

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There were, I think, a total of eighty-eight people from sales there, plus a bunch of higher-ups and everybody’s guests. There were a handful of people I’d met in passing before, but no one I knew well. They were from all over the place—all over the country but also foreign countries. I met people from Australia, England, and Tunisia, among other places. I met a lot of people from LA. Other than some managers who work in the Boston office, I was the only person from Boston there. I was also one of the youngest people, which was weird—in the office in Boston, I work with people who were born in the 90s and don’t have the same pop culture touchpoints as me. And I’m almost positive I was the only person there who was both single and childless. The vast majority of people brought their significant others and most of those who didn’t either brought one of their kids or at least had a significant other back at home. I’m pretty sure everyone thought Christina was my girlfriend until we explained that we were friends who lived on opposite coasts.

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But most of the colleagues and guests that I met were really nice and interesting. On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday there were mandatory dinners that we attended with everyone at the summit, one of which culminated on releasing these lanterns over the ocean. We also had went on a couple of sponsored activities with colleagues. One was a sunset boat cruise on our last night there. The other was a trip that included snorkeling and a visit to Stingray City, where you can swim with stingrays!

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Christina and I also rented a cabana and spent a whole day there, lounging on the beach and having food and drinks brought to us.

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On another day, we went to Hell. Literally.

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Yep, Hell is a rock formation in Grand Cayman. There’s even a post office so you can send post cards from hell. Christina sent one to her dad’s church.

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Also, free booze. SO MUCH free booze.

 

It was an awesome trip that came at the perfect time—and it was all free since it was a work trip!

Thirty-Not-So-1derful

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I turn thirty-one tomorrow. I know everyone groans a bit about turning another year older, but honestly, this birthday has me upset.

 

I have had an incredibly rough couple of months. There was the five-day oasis of the Grand Cayman trip (which, yes, I will get around to writing about) and some other happy moments, but for the most part, things have been pretty miserable.

 

I did find a new apartment. Finally. It’s a nice place at a reasonable price that’s not too far from the place I lost in the fire, and I’m moving there sometime next month. But it took a really long time to find it and the whole process was incredibly disheartening. I only lived in my old apartment for a year and it didn’t take me very long to find, but somehow in a year, one bedrooms and studios in my area became very scarce. It’s really weird how they decide what to charge for apartments—the place I ended up signing a lease on is much nicer than a lot of the more expensive places I saw. At one point I filled out an application for a place I didn’t really like, just because I had no idea if I’d ever find anything else. At another point, after finding out that an apartment, which had been listed for almost two months but that the realtor couldn’t show until a month before it became vacant, was being shown at 5 PM, I requested to leave work an hour early and showed up with about fifteen other people to see the place, discovered that the price had been raised $100/month due to demand and that the sample unit pictures in the ad looked nothing like the actual apartment, filled out the application, and found out the next day that the landlord had picked someone else.

 

Also, I cannot believe how rude people have been to me. I’ve had some very good realtors, but I have also had some HORRIBLE ones, including one—let’s call her Danielle Felice of New England Properties— whom I’m going to report to the Better Business Bureau. (Seriously. RUN, do not walk, if you ever have the misfortune of coming across an apartment she’s showing.) It’s really sad when I consider “actually listens to me” and “treats me like a human being” and “expresses sympathy when someone is displaced by a fire” to be positive qualities in a realtor—I cannot believe how many people did none of those things.

 

I have spent an unbelievable amount of time in tears recently and I’m sick of it. Even before the fire, I was lonely and hated a lot of things about myself, and the fire just made it worse. When it comes down to it, I think I am less happy right now than I have ever been in my life. Something needs to change, and I’m doing my best to make that happen, but I’m afraid that it won’t. I’m afraid everything is going to get worse and worse. That eventually I won’t even be able to hope, that I won’t have anything to look forward to anymore.

 

Maybe once I’m settled into the new place, it will be easier to pull myself together and move on. I certainly hope so—and I also hope that I’ll never get to the point where I stop saying “I hope so.”

 

Here’s to the end of the awful first year of my thirties—may things get better from here.

The Fire at My Apartment Building

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On Tuesday morning, there was a big fire in my apartment complex that killed one person and displaced many others, including me.

 

I woke up around 5 AM to banging on the door. I could see fire trucks when I opened it, so I quickly put shoes on and grabbed my purse and laptop. I guess now I have an answer to that question about what I’d save from a fire.

 

The complex that I lived in until Tuesday is an older one, with wooden buildings that are all connected and form a circle around a courtyard. It’s grandfathered into the fire codes, apparently, so there’s no building-wide alarm and no sprinklers.

 

My apartment is on the side of the building and the building that was on fire is in the back of the complex. I saw the hoses being aimed at it when I went outside- by then the flames were gone. I was just about to call my parents when they called me—they’d seen it on the news.

You can read more details about it here, or in a lot of places—just Google “Arizona Terrace fire.”

 

I can’t believe Tuesday was only three days ago. Since then, I’ve entered my apartment twice and attended a meeting for all residents. My apartment was not on fire but when I went in, the floor was all wet and everything smelled like smoke. I can’t stay there because the electricity was shut off to a block of units that includes mine. They’re working with an electrician to try to restore power to my building, but even if they do, I don’t want to live there anymore. My lease was up at the end of the month anyway.

 

The majority of my stuff is okay—some of it got wet, most of it smells like smoke, but I won’t lose very much, and I do have renter’s insurance and everyone’s telling me it will make things much easier. (PSA: if you rent, seriously, get insurance. It’s very cheap and completely worth it.) A cleaning company has all my clothes and bedding right now—in a week they should be getting everything back to me. Until they restore power, I need a police or fire escort to enter the unit and get more of my stuff.

 

For the time being, I’m staying with my parents in the suburbs. They’ve been awesome, but the commute is a bitch and I’m now looking for a new place to live. I think I might sublet for the summer and then look for something more permanent.

 

It was caused by some asshole dropping a cigarette on bark mulch. I’ve written before about how angry smokers make me, but now that I’ve actually lost my home because some idiot just had to inhale smoke into his or her lungs, no one is allowed to disagree with me on how much people who smoke suck.

 

I know it could be worse. I’m alive and unhurt, I have a place to stay, and I’ll retain most of my stuff. I feel terrible for the friends and family of the man who died and for those who lost everything. There’s a fund set up to help those who need it.

 

But it still sucks. Yesterday I broke down crying and just felt very alone. When bad stuff happens and you’re already unhappily single, it has a way of making everything seem worse. And every once in a while I catch a whiff of smoke on one of the things I got from the apartment.

 

One good thing that’s coming up: the week after next, I have a work trip to Grand Cayman. I was invited with a bunch of sales colleagues after my performance over the last couple of years landed me in the top 10% of sales professionals company-wide. Christina’s coming with me as my guest and I am looking forward to a fantastic time in the sun. And after this week, I really need it.

 

I can’t believe this is happening. I didn’t want to live in that apartment forever, but when I moved out, I wanted it to be MY choice, you know?

Asking the Internet for Advice

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I’ve been thinking too much, as I sometimes do. And there are a few things I have on my mind, because they’re things about which I’ve never really heard any advice given. They’re all things that I’ve been told, directly or indirectly, that I should be doing—but what I haven’t heard is how.

 

So I could use your advice on these three things, Internet. I’m interested in EVERYONE’S thoughts on these, whether I know you or not, whether you’ve commented before or you just lurk, whether I met you in real life or on the Internet, whether you want to share your name or be anonymous. If you have thoughts—any thoughts at all—please comment.

 

How do you stop comparing yourself to other people?

This advice is given on the Internet so many times it’s almost a cliché. “Want to be happier? Stop comparing yourself to others!” “Not satisfied with where you are in life? Stop comparing yourself to others!”

 

But I’ve yet to find any practical advice on HOW to stop comparing yourself to others.

 

Because here’s the thing: almost everything in life is designed to encourage comparison.  Look at high school—you spend all of high school competing for the best grades. The winning time in the meet or the most goals scored. That leadership position you want to put on your resume. The lead in the play, the first chair in the orchestra. All this so that you can beat out other people for spots in the college you want to go to.

 

And it never really ends. At work now, I’m in sales, and comparing yourself to other salespeople is a built-in part of the job. You see where other people are in life and use them as yardsticks for where your life should be, or could be.

 

All the advice I’ve ever read on the attempt to stop comparing yourself to others is really vague and general. So…do people who don’t compare themselves to others really exist? And if so, how do they do it?

 

This kind of goes hand-in-hand with my next question:

 

What do you do when you’re not happy for someone and you’re expected to be?

 

So let’s say someone in your life has some good news while your own life is…not going so well lately. And while you know it’s fairly normal to be happy for someone while also being jealous…what about when you’re 0% happy and 100% jealous? And you feel like the only thing that would make you feel happiness for this person would be an improvement in how things are going in your own life?

 

Jealousy is ugly and it’s kind of a shameful thing to have to admit to, but I feel it all the time. But I don’t know how to put an end to it. When someone gives the advice to be happy for the person’s good news, to me that sounds like, “Even though you didn’t like that (fill-in-the-blank…could be a movie, book, song, food, etc.), you should just change your mind and like it!”

 

I honestly don’t think I can just decide to be happy for someone and make my percent of happy higher than zero. I have tried and it really didn’t work. But other than working to improve my own life, in hopes that it will decrease my jealousy, what do I do?

 

And one more thing:

 

What do you do when someone won’t forgive you for something you’re truly sorry for?

 

I’ve never really talked about this, on this blog or anywhere else, and even now I don’t want to go into too much detail.

 

About two and a half years ago, I said something I shouldn’t have said, and the result was the end of more than one friendship. When I apologized to the person I’d hurt, she didn’t accept it and essentially said that she’d never forgive me and didn’t want to talk to me ever again.

 

It is not an exaggeration to say that I think about this every single day.

 

It’s not the only misstep I’ve made, either, and was not the only thing that led to the end of these friendships. I’ve spent a lot of time retracing my steps, thinking of how things might be different now in my relationships with people if I’d made different choices. The fact that I’ve hurt and upset other people absolutely kills me.

 

I see so many people in my life who are actually good people, people who don’t hurt others, people who can go to bed at night knowing that they are actually not terrible human beings, and I wish so much that I could be one of them.

 

When there’s not the slightest chance of being forgiven, is there any chance you can forgive yourself? And if so, how do you do it?

 

Please comment. I really want to hear what people think about any or all of these questions.

Update on Life

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A lot’s been happening with me recently, and I thought I’d take a minute to recount it here.

 

If I’m being honest, I have to admit that lately I’ve felt really, really lonely. It seems like it’s been weeks since I had a real, honest conversation with someone.

 

So for now, I’ll write about some of the good things that have been happening.

 

First, I bought a car!

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Even though I’m thirty, this is actually the first car I’ve ever owned. I had a car as a teenager, but it was only “mine” for a year, since it became my sister’s after I went to college. I also don’t really enjoy driving and don’t need to drive to get to most places I need to go. But sometimes I do need to get out of the city and I was sick of depending on other people for rides. So now I have this car! I mostly just drive to chorus every week and I drove to Marblehead a few weeks ago to meet my cousin’s cute new baby. But it’s nice having the option to drive places if I have to.

 

Second, I finished my fourth half-marathon!

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Even writing that is weird. How did I become the kind of person who does four half-marathons? I still do not think of myself as a runner. I’m not an athlete and I’m actually kind of lazy about exercise most of the time. And yet…I just did this fourth half-marathon (the Bay State Half Marathon in Lowell) and got a really good time for me. This is a really flat course (there’s a marathon at the same time, and since it’s so flat, people use it to qualify for Boston- even their advertisements say so) and the weather was perfect and autumn-y, so that’s part of where the good time came from. But I also just feel faster, and while it might be awhile before I do another half, I kind of want to try again and maybe break two hours. It feels possible!

 

Third, I’ve had a couple of fun experiences at book signings lately. The first one was with none other than Neil Patrick Harris! He was doing a signing of his new memoir at Brookline Booksmith, so I got a ticket. None of my friends ended up going, but I made friends with the people around me in line. (Although two of them, who actually ended up being pretty cool once I talked to them, started off their time in line having this really graphic conversation about how someone they knew had an infection and I was dying to say, “Guys, I JUST ATE.”) They were hurrying everyone through the HUGE line as quickly as they could, so there wasn’t time to take a picture with him, but my new line-friends and I took each other’s pictures and sent them to each other.

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I had all these things I was going to say to NPH, like, “Congratulations on the Oscars! Are you going for a hosting EGOT?” (They’d just announced the day before that he was going to be the Oscar host.) Or, “Will you sing ‘The Confrontation’ with me?” But they all flew out of my head and I just ended up saying something like, “Thank you for being here!” and that I liked what I’d read of the book while standing in line. So I don’t think I left much of an impression on NPH, but I’m glad I went.

 

The other book signing experience was last weekend at the Boston Book Festival. You remember my post about the book series I loved as a kid? Well, I was really excited when I learned that Ann M. Martin, the creator of The Baby-Sitters Club, would be there. So of course I went to her panel and got her autograph and a picture with her afterwards! Ten-year-old Katie is so jealous of thirty-year-old Katie. (I met some cool people in that line, too. Lots of interesting people to meet at book signings.)

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I always try to do NaNoWriMo and never succeed. I do have a new idea this year, though, so we’ll see how I do. Some writing completed is always better than nothing, after all. You can friend me there if you want—purebrightfire is my name there.

 

And happy belated Halloween!

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Why, God, Why?

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And so, I am thirty.

 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj91yi5NOsE&w=420&h=315]

 

Since I’m still single, obviously, turning thirty is not a good thing. But I’m not going to focus on that.

 

It’s funny, the things you think will make you an adult, or make you feel like an adult. Back when I wrote this post, buying property seemed absolutely unattainable. Now, while I still rent instead of own…let’s just say owning is a much more realistic goal now. I live alone now, and while it’s awesome, it doesn’t really make me feel like an adult, either. And even though I have a full-time job and have steadily advanced in my company over the seven years I’ve worked there, that does nothing to make me feel adult, either.

 

But you know what does? The fact that I now sometimes sign my name with a scribble. When I was a kid, I hated it when adults did that and swore I never would. And now I do it.

 

There are plenty of things I thought I’d outgrow that I never did, though.

  • I never got to like coffee. I’ve tried and I just don’t like the way it tastes.
  • I still order chicken fingers in restaurants all the time.
  • I love Disney movies and Disney in general and have lately been dying to go back to Disney World.
  • Actually, I love amusement parks in general. Even kid rides like the merry-go-round.
  • I still have stuffed animals on my bed. I can’t part with them.
  • I can’t part with my basket full of Beanie Babies, either. They’re too cute.
  • I’m super-nostalgic for all the TV shows I loved in my childhood. I sometimes watch Sesame Street clips on YouTube and I have Ghostwriter on DVD.
  • Girl Meets World is on my DVR.
  • Early to bed/early to rise is still not my thing. I’d much rather sleep until noon on weekends.
  • Blowing bubbles and flying a kite outside sounds wonderful to me.
  • I still hate shopping for clothes.
  • However, I’ve been known to go into toy stores just to look around.
  • I never manage to do laundry/put away laundry in an efficient manner.
  • I still don’t have a nice watch. I wear this cheap waterproof digital watch from Target.
  • Many nights I’d rather play board games than go out to a bar.

 

The weird thing I’ve noticed about getting older is that there are plenty of times when you feel old. You can’t understand why teenagers like some weird thing (like the Yo app—seriously, why?). You realize that you’re working with people born in the 90s. You realize you started high school sixteen years ago. But even if you feel old…you still might not feel like an adult.

 

Do you ever? Is this something that will never really happen and you just think it will?

Blogging About Blogging

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I have now been blogging for almost eight years. And I have to say, I’m quite proud of myself for continuing to blog regularly. I decided early on that I’d post at least once a month, and for eight years I’ve stuck to that—and I almost always blog more than once a month.

I read a ton of blogs, so many that I can’t use The Old Reader without paying for it. And within the last year, I’ve noticed a lot of the bloggers I read have either stopped blogging, taken long hiatuses and then come back, or contemplated quitting blogging. There was this article at the end of last year (Lorraine alerted me to it) that declared the blog dead. I certainly hope that’s not true—for someone who reads as many blogs as I do, that would be a tragedy.

I, for one, have absolutely no intention of quitting blogging. I love blogging. My blog may change forms over the years (in fact, changes are soon coming to this blog, the least of which is its name—I turn thirty in nine days, so “Struggling Single Twenty-Something” is obviously a name that can’t last forever), but I hope I will never stop updating it.

But with so many blogs slowing down or stopping, it does beg the question of why. People stop blogging for all kinds of reasons—they’re too busy, they’ve run out of things to say, they’re not getting the audience they want, they’d rather just use Twitter or Tumblr (ugh), they just aren’t feeling it anymore.

That’s why they stop—but why blog, or why continue to blog? I’ve heard all kinds of reasons for that, too. Some people blog to document their lives, either for themselves or for people who know them. Or because they’re writing a book and want to build an online audience first. Or because they want to promote their business. Or because they have some kind of expertise that could help other people. Or because they want to start a conversation on some kind of topic of interest to them.

I thought recently about why I blog, and the answer I came up with is actually very simple.

I blog because I love to write.

Do I want people to read what I write? Well, obviously. If I didn’t, I’d be writing all of this stuff in a private journal instead. And I have really enjoyed getting to know other bloggers through 20sb and Boston Blogger meetups. But even if I’m just shouting into a void, even if no one ever reads this, even if I’m the last blog left on the Internet…well, I’m still writing. And I really enjoy writing. Having an audience is nice, but in truth, it’s just…the candy on top of the frosting on the cake. (I didn’t want to say “the frosting on the cake” because that’s one misguided metaphor—the frosting, in in my opinion, is the main reason to eat the cake.)

So I’ll keep blogging. “Struggling Single Twenty-Something” will become something new within the next week, but as long as I love to write, which I’ve loved all my life, I will also love blogging.

My Internet Origins

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Recently, Television Without Pity, aka TWoP, ceased operations. In April, they stopped posting any new recaps and on May 31, the forums shut down. Even though I hadn’t posted in the forums for a long time and only occasionally popped in to read a recap, I was sad to hear it. This was a site I used to spend a lot of time on. I was very active in the Gilmore Girls forums for a long time and I made a lot of friends I’m still in touch with today.

But let’s back up a bit. The loss of TWoP, a place that was a huge part of my online life for a long time, got me thinking about what Lorraine and Sweeney on Snark Squad refer to as “internet origins.” Theirs are hereand here. And here’s mine.

When I was a freshman in high school, we got the Internet. I used my mom’s email to write to my friends, and I’d send these long, very enthusiastic emails to my friends. Except once I got a friend’s email address wrong and it went to some random guy.

We had dial-up Internet (my parents actually had dial-up until I was a senior in college), so I couldn’t spend too much time online for fear of tying up the phone line. But I never spent a whole lot of time online until the summer before my junior year of high school, when I got into The X-Files.

I got into The X-Files at a weird time—during the summer between the seventh and eighth season, just as the show was losing David Duchovny and the quality was about to rapidly decrease. Back then, they showed reruns daily on FX, and I’m kind of impressed with myself for how quickly I got caught up with the show considering that TV on DVD was not yet a thing. Instead, I just watched and taped those reruns, and since I was watching them out of order, I discovered X-Files fan sites that helped me make sense of what had happened on the show so far.

There was one big fan site in particular, now defunct, called Idealists Haven, where I discovered this little thing called fanfiction. I read a ton of XF fanfic—often saving them so I could read them offline and not tie up the phone—and eventually started writing it myself.

Yeah, that’s a deep, dark secret from my past. No, I will not share that fanfic here. Believe me when I say that it is truly, truly awful. I need to remove all traces of it from the Internet and then pray that the Internet is not, in fact, forever.

Then I went to college and The X-Files ended. Freshman year of college, the big thing was finally having high-speed Internet. I joined AIM and posted lots of melodramatic away messages. (Actually, I think I enjoyed coming up with different profiles and away messages more than talking to people.) I downloaded a ton of music through questionable means. I finally had my own email address.

Sophomore year of college was when I rediscovered Internet fandom. I was watching Monk at the time and started a short-lived Angelfire page (which I’d lost the address to until recently) where I just kind of rambled about my thoughts on each episode and which character had been the “coolest” in those episodes. While I’d always liked Gilmore Girls, this was the season where I started connecting with fellow fans online via TWoP.

Nothing has shaped my Internet life more than TWoP. I’ve made so many friends through that site and a lot of us have stayed in touch through Facebook and posting on a private forum. I’ve even met some of them in person. We used to have local TWoP cons where TWoP posters from Boston would meet for lunch at The Cheesecake Factory, and meeting these people I only knew by their screen names was awesome and kind of surreal. I went to my first TWoP con my junior year of college and I was so nervous, but I had so much fun!

But, uh…one time I accidentally started a flamewar. It actually got a write-up on this site called Fandom Wank that documents Internet drama. I’m the Katie they mention in that post (they seem to agree with me, thankfully), but basically what happened was that after one Gilmore Girls episode that most fans liked, the recapper, Pamie (whom I actually like and who has since published several books and written for many TV shows), posted a really negative review. TWoP had this kind of asinine rule that you couldn’t criticize the recappers in the forums (although showering them with praise was fine), so when Pamie linked to the recap on her blog, I left a polite blog comment saying that I disagreed with her and other fans joined me. Well, the next thing I knew all the other TWoP recappers were piling on yelling at us and it majorly escalated, culminating in Pamie posting this really sarcastic recap for the next episode. I was mortified and, even though I didn’t think I’d done anything wrong, ended up apologizing to Pamie. I had not meant for any of it to happen—but now I kind of think the whole story is hilarious. Years afterward, I saw the incident mentioned elsewhere on the Internet and was like yeah…that was me.

Oh, yeah, and I started writing fanfic again. It got to be kind of an obsession—I’d be sitting in class planning out my next story instead of taking notes. But it was great writing practice and enough people read and liked my stories that it boosted my confidence a lot. (I’m actually pretty sure that more people have read my fanfic than anything else I’ve ever written.)

BC was on Facebook pretty early, when Facebook was just for college students and the URL was thefacebook.com, and I actually held out for a bit until I joined in December 2004. I was never on Myspace, though. All those pages where music started playing the second you opened the page annoyed me so much that I could never bring myself to join.

The same month I joined Facebook, I started my first blog, which I’ve since made private. I was very ambivalent about the idea of any kind of online journal or blog for a long time, but I finally decided to start one that only my online communities knew about. In 2006, several of my online friends and I joined Livejournal, and a few years later I started a second LJ where I did share some things with real-life friends. I no longer use either of them, though.

In September 2006, I started this blog. That same year, I got back into fanfic, this time for The O.C. (I have not relapsed since, though. And yes, I have often referred to it in terms of an addiction, because it is highly addictive!)

My most recent online community has been 20sb. Once I joined that, I discovered so many awesome blogs—and people—and have become friendly with many fellow bloggers. I wish 20sb was as active as it was in 2011-2012, but maybe that will change with the new redesign they’re planning.

And that’s my life online so far. More will be coming soon, specifically changes to this blog…stay tuned!

Ode to the Juno

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I’m moving on the 31st, only about a mile away. I’m going to be living alone for the first time, which I’m really excited about. Eventually I might change that by getting a cat.

Until then, though, I’ll be living without a cute furry thing for the first time in three years. That’s because for those three years, I’ve been living with my roommate and her dog, Juno.

 

Juno, in my humble opinion, is the best dog ever. She’s probably a flat-coated retriever, and she loves you. Really. Even if she doesn’t know you, she loves you. Because she loves EVERYBODY. It doesn’t matter who you are. If you are a human, she loves you.

We should all be more like Juno.

I like to think she loves me more than the average human, though. I love her so much. I love how she likes to cuddle even in 90-degree heat. I love how she never stops wagging her tail. I love how she’d rather have attention than dog food and is always rolling on her back begging for a belly rub. I love how she’s six years old but still acts like a puppy. I love that she thinks she’s a lapdog despite being sixty pounds. I love how many kisses she gives. I love how excited she is to see me when I get home.

I have a lot of nicknames for her: Junebug, Puppy-girl, The Black Furball of Need, Princess Waggytail, Cuddles McFurry, You Ridiculous Beast. She doesn’t call me anything, but I call myself her Backup Human. If she could talk, as I’ve said before, I’m pretty sure she’d be singing a song that goes something like, “I’m the cutest! I’m the cutest! I’m the cutest!” (It’s not a very complicated song because she’s not a very complicated dog.) But she does have very high self-esteem.

She’s super quiet, though, which I appreciate. She very rarely barks, and when she does, it’s usually because she saw a cat out the window.

I never had a dog or a cat or any pets aside from fish growing up- my parents are just not pet people. This was the first time I’d ever lived with an animal, and living with her improved my quality of life immeasurably. During the manhunt for the Boston Marathon bomber, I spent a lot of the day anxiously petting her on the couch and thinking she’d make a great therapy dog.

No, even the best dog ever isn’t perfect. She sheds like crazy. She’s ridiculously needy and completely shameless. The firefighters down the street give her treats, which she knows, so one day when I was walking her, she saw that the firehouse door was open and yanked my arm out of the socket and the next thing I knew, I was in the firehouse, awkwardly standing there like, “Uh…hi. My dog wants a treat?” And she is the lickiest dog I’ve ever met in my life- while I like getting puppy kisses, my friends are not such big fans and I constantly have to tell her, “Juno, I know you love everybody but that does not mean you have to kiss everybody.” But even so, someday in the distant future I want my own dog, but I feel really bad for that hypothetical future dog—Juno has set the bar really high. It’s going to be hard to find a dog who’s half as awesome as she is.

I’m going to miss you, Juno. Keep being the best dog ever, and it has been a privilege to be your Backup Human.