You’re meant to be online for your own reasons not for everyone else’s

“You’re meant to be online for your own reasons not for everyone
else’s.”

This was something a friend told me a few years ago. Ever since, it
has been something I have pondered from time to time. At first blush
it seems a simple enough thing and is fairly straightforward in nature
and it is. But the longer you think about it the more you have to ask
yourself, What is my reason for being online in first place?

Until about 12 years ago the internet and home computers in general
were mostly just a novelty, and a fairly pricey one at that, for most
people. Now though they are pretty much a commonplace thing in
most homes. But it still leaves that question, What are your reasons
for being online? Before the internet we managed to get information
by going to a library and meet people without viewing their “profile” or
MySpace page and sent letters via the postal service or made a phone
call. Or just went to their house for a visit.

Of course before that if we wanted to meet someone from another
country we had to travel to their country unless we met them
traveling in our own. Now, we can have friends on the other side
of the planet that we may never actually meet face to face.

When I first got online it was, for me, a way to find information.
Mostly information that wasn’t readily available to me where
I live. For a very long time I merely wandered the internet,
exploring and lurking, never actively participating. Then one
day I finally took the headlong plunge and started posting on a
forum and got hooked on it. For a long time I contented myself
with merely posting on other people’s forums and sites. For some
reason I still am not entirely sure of I built my first website on
Geocities. Some of my online friends may still remember that first
attempt at building a website. It wasn’t very pretty and it in
retrospect, it looked amateurish. And that is a kind description
IMO. (Hey, my site, my opinion.)

After that I got the wild hair to make my own forum, the
first Bastion. It looked a little rough around the edges too as
I recall it. Ok, a lot rough but not too bad for my first “serious”
attempt at building one. A year and a half later came The
Bastion’s second incarnation, this time as a .com, this site in it’s
first form. It was rushed into service before I was completely
ready because things with my business on eBay went to Hell in a
hand basket due to them jacking their fees up. I scrambled to find
alternative auctions and found one to put my stuff in while I got
The Bastion’s own store online, something that took me two
months of bumbling around to do before I finally got it to work
the way I wanted it to. The rest of the was fairly easy since the
bulk of it was the old SMF forum, the old blog and the gallery.
The other parts came more slowly since I had to make them from
scratch and was still learning.

And we come back the original question, What is my reason for being
online?

Dunno, I’ll get back to you on that when I figure it out myself.