In honor of my 23rd birthday coming up in a few short weeks, I thought I would get nostalgic for a bit…
Ten years ago, I turned 13. I finally noticed I had nothing in common with my current friends and felt I couldn’t be myself around them. I sought out new friends I could feel more comfortable with.
I became better friends with Akua. I considered her my best friend until she moved away freshman year of HS. I met Meredithe in computer class and hung out with Rachelle in our awful technology class. Through them, I met other fantastic people who accepted me for the crazy person I am.
Once I was no longer afraid to be myself, I learned who I really was. I was not an actress who dreamed of living in the city, but a computer geek who loved Sliders and The X-Files. I started my first website, then I created another, and another, and another. This is who I was. I attended Space Camp. I started to actually care about my grades.
If those people hadn’t taken me in and included me in their social circle of wackiness, I don’t think I would have turned out the same.
1998 was also the year I got my first period, everyone started calling me Lissy, I was supposed to go on my first date (never happened), I was way too excited about AOL 4.0, I used the screen name: BTVSlider (feel free to google it) and went by the name: Maggie Cooper. Maggie still gets junk mail.
–edit: If you have some time, do check out kirtsy (formerly sk*rt). It’s like digg, but without all the annoying boys :P –/edit–
Wow, ’98 was a big year for you… Ahah. I graduated from 6th grade that year. But yeah, wow, nice, going through the stuff that happened that year. Geez. I just realized that I didn’t even start going online until I was in 8th grade or so! I didn’t get my first e-mail account until then!
As for all of the people/friends you’ve met, yep, I know what you mean me about wondering if you’d turn out the same. Same with me. It’s so weird meeting all of the people you’ve met, because a lot of the times, you’d end up having experiences from those people, whether it’s good or bad, and they’ve changed your life forever. But it’s nice to know all of the people who’ve stuck by you through all of those years, though.
Looks like a lot of life-changing events happened in 1998 for you :) I was still a kid at that time and knows nothing about the Internet. We had a personal computer at home, but it didn’t run on Windows – it ran on MS DOS instead, heh.
My first experience with the Internet was in 2002, during my first day in my old middle school. We attended computer lesson that afternoon and I was finally formally introduced to what people called the Internet. I created my first email account that day from Yahoo! (at that time, Google’s wasn’t even quite famous yet), and even tried wrap my head around the whole HTML thing my teacher was talking about. For the next few months, we’re taught basic HTML and I started to pick up skills in graphic design. That’s when I started to love webdesign, heheh.
Ah… I’m in the same boat as you are, my birthday is fast approaching and I’m going to be hitting the bit 2-3 in two weeks… pretty scary already… I just almost want to go into hiding for that day.
I was most definitely a very different person 10 years ago as well… definitely an outcast that was involved with geeks, and the “asian crew” and never up to any good. It’s a miracle that I actually made it out right through it all. ^_^
Sometimes it feels really good to just look back and know that we had to go through the things that we do in order to become the person we are today, and what happened yesterday contributes to tomorrow.
Haha, I remember loving AOL. We used it on the first ever Macintosh. At that time, it was the best computer hhh-ever. Now the mention of AOL and I’m angered. My mom’s actually joining a lawsuit against them (she used to work for them a LONG time ago. She was one of those community leaders).
Haha I wasn’t very exciting in 1998. I turned 11, and was extremely geeky!
I don’t know if I am too late or too early, but happy birthday in advance! It’s great to look back and examine the little things that have made you the person that you are. =)
In 1998, I was evacuated from Indonesia in an Exodus-like manner, due to the Jakarta riots. It was also a memorable year for me, but not exactly the best one.