Better to write for yourself and have no public...

I was re-reading my old blogs from Yahoo, and thought it would be a great idea to revise them and update some thoughts. This first one was written in February of 2008. I consider it still quite on the money since I still think that way. Maybe re-posting it will give new readers new insights, comments from old friends are always welcome. I find this post current because just about a week ago, my flickr photostream reached 2 million views. Not going to say it didn't make me feel a bit vain, sometimes you need a shot to boost your ego, especially when other things are not going good...
Still have to admit taking pictures still holds a fascination on me. Don't know about that flash that makes me smile :-P I think the latest pic is a bit 'cheeky', but lets admit it, most hits come from viewers who enjoy such assets.


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Lori and Nani reminded me yesterday that I have been online for quite some time. I have not been here since the beginning but I did manage to find a little cubicle here in 360 and it happened that some people decided my musings were decent enough to be followed I didn't mean it to be that way. I decided to blog because I felt the need to start writing. It made me feel good to blog and it felt therapeutic in a way. I did not feel the need to antagonize anybody, there were no insults going back and forth on the comments, I guess nobody wanted to take center stage and be the drama queen back then. It felt good that a few of the friends I IM'd with commented on them. But life online was never the same when a whole bunch of people I never met started reading those rantings. Having a following was not the first thing that I wanted or expected. My first Yahoo 360 page (for those who remember sultrylaura 2004) went over 250,000 hits the first year. KC mentioned I had arrived to superstardom. I didn't like it. Most of my time online was spent accepting or rejecting new friends, people who would never contact me again but I had the obligation to write once in a while. Was this my fifteen minutes of fame? I was sure of it. and it bothered me that I was neglecting what I liked to do, be myself and write a blog about what I wanted. This was the time when the URNA rankings were most popular and everyone was scrambling to get some votes. I got caught in that mad race. It made no sense going to people's pages I'd never seen before and ask shamelessly for a vote. After being #1 for a couple of weeks I had enough and stopped, eventually ending in 9th place that month ( I think it was September '05). Getting online had become an obsession, a very absurd one at that.

It was actually one of my sons that slapped me with a reality check. He looked at my page views and my rankings and was impressed that I was so popular. I thought I would impress him with that, and he was. It was when he left after summer was over, that I realized something was terribly wrong. It was not the ratings and hits that should impress him. Those things were not me and did nothing to show my sons who I was. Spending time in front of the computer, wasting valuable kid time was something I could not get back.

Beauty and fame will not always be there. I kept repeating this over and over again as I backpedaled to my highschool years. I was never the popular kid. I did get calls at home from all my friends. But it was mostly because they wanted to compare homework answers. I never had a girlfriend in HS(yea I know, that's got nothing to do with popularity and a lot to do with my gender dysfunction) I felt it was a very childish behavior to be looking for acceptance and approval at the 'looks' level. If that was what I thought would make me popular, then I was regressing to an adolescent era where peer pressure ruled. I do compare winning the KTM Girl of the Year in 2005 as being the Queen of the Prom. It left me empty. I couldn't share that with my kids, nor that they cared that their favorite parent was winning awards for showing off legs and upskirt pics. I was not folowing the path I had chosen since my school years and I was not happy.

So I changed it. I created a new page with less friends. I stopped caring about URNA, I stopped sending pics to KTM. It all seems quite a long time ago, but it has only been 2 years. I am happy that I can go online and not worry about 20 or 30 invites. no rankings and no weird emails. My IM remains quiet unless I go out of stealth and it feels good that way. My new 360 page has less than 200,000 hits in almost 2 years...

So why this long rant, you may ask? It all goes back to Nani and Lori who invited me over to a chat conference. There were people in it which I had not met before. I was introduced by Lori and Nani as some internet deity. Well, the other girls were a bit confused after the introduction. I myself was wondering why I was considered a matriarch. That made me feel old ( aaaaahhhhh! ) In any case I really felt flattered my friends considered me in such high esteem. But I want to get real. I am just another Tgirl putting her story out in the internet. Nothing really special really. I guess my claim to fame can be found in one phrase: Proud to be myself in front of the world, now that could be a a nice epitaph if I wanted to be buried in a musty ole cemetery. I do not want drama, I am not about the looks, I do not want to change the world nor do I want to extend my 15 minutes of fame. I just like to tell my story to anyone who wants to listen.Maybe the time has come to leave the limelight, there are other more interesting stories to be told by energetic and ever positive gals like Lori and Nani... And with that my rant is done and so is my wine glass

t'was a nice dinner I cooked, right G?