Manda got me thinking of my past life the other day, from before I joined the Q*Bee, before I got this domain. As I may have mentioned sometime before (or not), back when I was 12/13/14 I went on Habbo Hotel a lot, and met some of the most amazing people there who I remained best friends with for ages – and when I say best friends, I mean I-know-almost-everything-about-you best friends; I told them my personal problems, my feelings when I was going through depression, and even some of them got to know my address and phone number. Eventually, though, due to stress, annoyances, and want of a new ‘life’, I quit, ditched MSN Messenger/Skype etc, and left the internet. When I came back, I began doing other things, like TCGs, webdesign, pixelling and, eventually, blogging.

I do regret leaving them all. Blogging, no offense, just doesn’t have the same feel to it as running around in that virtual hotel and holding parties did. Although I love to just write a load of drabble and post it, hoping for some comments, instant messaging really was awesome for making some great friends. For getting so close to people that, in the end, you like them better than those people you know in the flesh.

More ramblings below.

Of course, now I’m on my summer break, I thought it would be a great chance for me to get in touch with everyone I used to know again. Most of them I still have on MSN, but there are a few who seem to have disappeared. Last night anyway, I was up until three in the morning talking to all sorts of people I used to know. That’s three in the bloody morning, btw (I think that’s why I ditched MSN in the first place, haha. Addiction). It was nice, I have to admit – I allowed myself to go hyper, to type like a 12-year-old, to laugh, and to speak to people over the microphone.

Although, I think taking a long, longggg break (and I mean about two years) really does do you a lot of good. In that break I’ve met some more great people, found some amazing new hobbies, began to create a life off the computer (not saying it’s succeeding, haha) and definitely matured as a person and learnt alot about the real me. Although I say how much I want to go back to those people on MSN, just one night last night made me suddenly realise how much I don’t want to. I woke up this morning and the first thing I did when I turned on the computer was turn on MSN. The first thing I thought when I akoke was that I want to chat with those people again, to get MySpace and Facebook and all that. There may not be much wrong with that, but the thing is, as soon as I began thinking about all that again, suddenly everything I’ve worked on over these years became stupid and pointless. I didn’t want to write. I didn’t want to check people’s blogs. I didn’t want to do that last bit of revision I’ve been doing every day since I broke up from school. I didn’t want to go out and talk to my mum, to help her out in the garden.

Along with all of these revelations, I’ve found out just how scary Facebook is. All you have to do is search a full name and bam, you have instant profile. Sure, you can’t view them unless you have an account, but still it’ll be pretty easy for people to stalk me. In fact, I found my IT teacher on there. A girl who I really want to get in touch with again. Some people from school. If I were to join Facebook, I would have to provide my full name, my age. Although I include that on here, at least I can keep my real life away from my online life pretty easily. Search ‘Aimee Green’ in Google and F-T isn’t there until page 5. I know it’s still stupid showing your full name online, but at least I can’t be stalked over Facebook. At least I don’t have unwanted people talking to me because my name is on one of the most popular social networking sites. I’m pretty freaked with how easy it was to find that girl I was looking for. How easily she seemed to reveal her surname to me all those years ago.

I think if I had a choice between blogging and instant messaging, I would choose the first. IM sucks you in, makes you reveal things, blows down any walls between you and the world. Blogging though, it’s a lot easier to decide what you want to reveal and what you don’t. Easier to limit yourself, to stop yourself from getting addicted. With blogging I have a real life, but with IM I’m a completely different person. Weird.