My father purchased my first computer when I was about 14 or 15 years old, and the unmistakable sound of dial-up still holds fond memories for me. We didn’t have a computer class in school as such; we would go to the computer lab for one hour each Friday and play games like Wheel of Fortune and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? When I got into high school, we played Oregon Trail and SimFarm. At the time, I remember thinking how utterly silly it was that as computer technology was on the rise, we were putting our learning time to use by playing games. Now I think I see what our teachers were doing; they were using games to help us get familiar and comfortable with computers.
I, however, needed little prompting. To this day I hold the firm belief that there is nothing I can do to a computer that is so bad that it can’t be fixed (by someone else, of course), and so I would open programs and click on every button just to see what would happen. I remember downloading tons of pictures of X-Men and everything else comic book related I could find. I remember when Stan Lee launched his web comics (I think it was 7th Portal, but alas, not being able to actually see it, it doesn't stick out in my mind; my dial-up was too slow to process them), and I first began hearing about DSL and high speed internet. I would spend hours on the computer everyday talking with my friends on AIM and how delighted I was every time I heard “You’ve Got Mail.” I considered myself internet savvy, and although I was never skilled enough to hack someone else’s computer or anything like that, I really felt that I knew my way around.
Somewhere along the way that changed. I’m not sure when it happened, but I suspect it was a long process. Many parents tell their children to get off of the computer because they’re not “out there” living life to the fullest. As I look back on how many hours I used to spend on the internet, I have no regrets (but consider that I lived in a super tiny town where absolutely nothing ever happened). I made friends online back in the day, but we’ve lost touch now. And when I look over my Facebook page, I realize that there is not one single person in my list of friends that is not someone I already know “in the real world.” Some people may believe that you can’t really form friends with people that you have never seen, but that’s not true. What makes a friend is someone that you have shared experience and emotion with, someone you share ideas with and someone you can safely confide in. There is nothing about a computer or the internet that prevents such an event from occurring.
I believe that human beings are explorers at the very core of their being, and I realize now that I have spent most of my computer time writing papers, doing research for classes, and checking email. After I complete those “tasks,” I log off, but the internet is a whole huge world out there, and I am ready to discover its secrets like Cousteau explored the (real) ocean and Captain Kirk explored (I really hope it's real) space. But I want to do more than that, too; I want to add my two cents in, but that’s going to take a lot of practice. The only kind of writing I’ve been doing for the last few years is academic writing, but it’s time for me to put that behind me as I look for a new job and start to reinvent myself into the person that I want to be.
But who do I want to be? Do I want to be a teacher? That’s what I have been doing the last few years, and while I find it immensely rewarding, I’m not sure that is who I am. Do I want to be a writer? I think so, but I also think that I’m not so good at it. I am choosing to believe the old adage that “practice makes perfect.” The more you do a thing, the better you get at it. Like any good scientist, let’s put that to the test!
