03 April 2014

Remember the Time

Listening to: All the mixes from 143's Soundcloud page. "143 is a monthly party of slow jams, love songs, and bed squeaking future R&B." Basically, I need to get to L.A. soon to attend one of these parties. But for now, these streams will have to do.

Digging the crates, looking up my important “firsts.” First Tweet, first Gmail, etc. These are really the important moments in my life. I read this article, "How Gmail Happened: The Inside Story of Its Launch 10 Years Ago” and they said that Gmail launched on April 1st, 2004. I started using it exactly a month later -- here's how to see your oldest message -- and haven’t stopped advocating for it since. I remember AMR and I got early invites because we were loyal Blogger users. Those extra two invites we had apiece were literal gold! We eBayed those suckers for like $80 each. It was a glorious time.

Now I’m taking a spin in my Gmail archives and reliving my life a decade ago. That basically involves Google stalking old co-workers and friends I’ve lost touch with. You know, the usual. Back in 2004 I was working at a generic pharmaceutical company. Filing, emailing, doing important stuff. I forgot what my title was. Quality assurance peon? This was my first foray into regular office culture and oh man, what a thrill! Sure hope I can get into that kind of job again. Not.

Oddly, my very first email was to myself, as I forwarded along a copy of my PDF resume as an attachment. Clearly I was very career focused as my first instinct was to preserve my resume for eternity on Google’s servers. Lot of good that did me over the past decade, right? Also, it’s unfortunate but my email address through most of my twenties was paradigmpimp@whatever. I had to start many subject headings with "This is not spam, I swear." I wish someone had intervened and told me to change my email address to something less faux ironic and dumb. And easier to spell.

For posterity, my first tweet sent into the world a little after midnight on May 24, 2007 was: "In new york, still up, blogging.” Ain’t shit changed....

While we’re at it, I was doing some more digging and came upon this 2006 review of my blog book from John Scalzi. Totally forgot about that! Sometimes I forget I wrote a book on blogging and that’s how I got my start.  I look at how I’ve only got five entries up so far this year and that just makes me sad sad sad. The move then is to recapture the blogging fire and toward that end I’m gonna blog every day till the end of the month. “No, don’t do it,” you cry. Too late, I already committed. And I always, always, follow through on my commitments.

Really, the first thing I should do is go through this Top 250 Blogs list from Rough Guide to Blogging and write up a “Where Are They Now” feature. Well, maybe not for all it. Perhaps just the “personal blogs” section. I mean, where is Bazima, Maganda, Minjung Kim now? Well, at least we know where Evhead went. The Blogger cofounder went on to start Twitter! Actually, let’s be real, the best part of writing Rough Guides was sneaking in friends like Boygirlparty, Eidolon, and Transcended. Plus I crammed in as many screenshots as I could of friends' blogs. Oh the power I wielded.

I think Rough Guides stopped printing the blogging book awhile ago and shockingly I only have like two copies in my closet. Perhaps I better start wandering into used bookstores to start collecting copies. Some day my children will want to hold my first book in their hands. Or maybe they won’t, since everything will be digitized by then and nobody will care about physical artifacts.

I sent these to my friend the other day, a collection of links to articles about writing and money, starting with a Scalzi classic. Also check out Scalzi's book on writing as a career, You're Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop.