i have a prestigious blog, sir

prestigious blog

post title from Party Down, one of the best shows that ever got cancelled

Some of you newer people (are there any newer people? who knows) may not know this, but this website and I used to be kind of internet famous.

Don’t laugh, I’m serious. At its peak (2001-2006), bluishorange got 4,000 unique visitors a day. Blogs were a brand-new thing, I was writing almost every day, and it didn’t hurt that I was young and cute. Sometimes when I sat down to write I would picture all 4,000 people standing together in a room–this was encouraging at times, but other times all those imaginary people were just staring at me expectantly, which was nerve-wracking.

Lots of good things happened to me as a result of that traffic. I met a ton of amazing people (many of whom are now my closest friends), I was nominated for awards, I got to be on a panel at SXSW Interactive. An anonymous reader (and eventual friend) gifted me his used MacBook to take on my road trip in 2007.

But some bad things happened, too, and I’ll tell you about a few of them here.

***

In late 2000, I quit my job as a web designer to go back to university, and after I quit, a former coworker began to send me lots of emails. They were friendly at first: he wrote responses to things I’d written on my website, or notes about what was happening at my former workplace. Then he asked me out. I politely declined, but the emails kept coming–mostly he was trying to convince me that I should in fact go out with him. We had not been in the same department at work, and though we’d worked in the same room of cubicles, we had never actually spoken in person. But as best I could tell, reading my website had made him feel like he knew me in a way that was very real to him.

Westheimer Street FestivalOne day I made the mistake of mentioning on my website a band that I was going to see at a street festival. I had a few friends in the band, and I’d made their website for them, and I was really excited to see them perform.

You can see where this is going, right? He was there. Of course he was there, and I can’t believe I was surprised by it. He sat under a tree near the stage, and though he was wearing mirrored sunglasses, I could tell that he hardly took his eyes off me. He was a big guy, and to a 22-year-old 125-pound girl like me, he looked a bit menacing. I had come to the festival with a few friends who were enjoying the show, so I didn’t say anything to them or try to get them to leave with me, though I probably should have. When the show ended, he went up to the merchandise table, bought a CD, and then walked away.

I got home that night to another long, desperate email, and (I remember this like it was last week) it ended with, “Please help me, Alison. Please be my friend.”

I replied immediately with, “Please do not contact me ever again,” put all his emails and my responses into an archive folder so I wouldn’t have to look at them in my inbox, and called my father. He insisted we talk to a lawyer (a family friend), who advised me to keep all the emails in case they were needed later, and told me that I needed to take my website down.

I took it down for about two weeks, which was all I could take, but I never again said anything online about places I might be going. The guy emailed me one more time in response to my plea not to contact me. It was full of invective–I was a bitch, and a tease, and I had led him on, and he was just trying to be nice and what the fuck was wrong with me.

Sometimes in my dreams I can still see my reflection in his mirrored sunglasses.

***

It was mostly easy to not inform the internet of where I was going to be in the future, but harder to avoid everyone knowing that I would be attending a conference I went to at the same time every year.

In the months leading up to SXSW 2003 (or 2004? I can’t remember exactly), there was a guy who would leave lots of comments on my website. The comments were mostly harmless, but his own website was less so. It was more of a home page than a website–he had a lot of different little sections on the page with his favorite quotes, links, and a few of his opinions, most of which were about what races of girls he liked and didn’t like. Fully half of the quotes and links on that page were mine.

He had never emailed me personally, but his apparent level of interest in me reminded me enough of my former coworker that I was pretty freaked out by him.

In a comment a few weeks before SXSW, he informed me that he would be in town during the conference and wanted to meet me. I did not want to meet him, so I ignored the comment, but I worried about the conference itself. I didn’t know what he looked like; would he just come up and blindside me?

I spent most of the conference looking over my shoulder. Eventually my friend Ryan met him briefly outside the convention center, then ran inside to describe him to me and let me know he was nearby and asking where I was. I quickly left the convention center via an exit on the other side of the building, and was lucky enough not to encounter him for the rest of the conference.

This is where my memory gets a little fuzzy. After the conference I remember uploading a lengthy .htaccess file to block his many different IP addresses from accessing my website. Eventually I stopped hearing from him.

***

There are other stories. A woman from the U.K. used my blog posts and photos of me to construct a fictional online identity, and after she was caught, the guy who had fallen in love with her attempted to transfer his affections to me. I got emails from men telling me that they had seen me out at this concert or that bar or cafe, but they hadn’t worked up the nerve to say hello. I would comb through my memories of those nights, trying to remember having seen someone looking at me.

All of this gave me a constant feeling that I was being watched. The 4,000 people I pictured in the 4,000-person-sized room usually stared at me expectantly, waiting for me to write something good, but other times they just watched. I kept on writing, because I didn’t know how not to write, and 99% of my readers were nice sane people who appreciated what I had to say.

Here is where I remind you that I’ve almost never done any non-blog writing. My stint as a person who writes (I don’t like to say I’m a writer) began with blogging, and continued with blogging, and doesn’t really exist outside of that. People always tell me I should write things just for myself and not post them. But I don’t exactly know how to write something that won’t be shared immediately.

Eventually I did stop writing regularly. Weblogs stopped being the best and easiest way to meet and keep in touch with people, and my site traffic fell. Blog commenting technology improved, allowing me to delete comments I felt were inappropriate or scary, but those comments never really came.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss my internet fame from time to time, especially when it happens to my friends and I can see the looks on their faces when someone they’ve never met tells them they like their work. If I hadn’t stopped writing, would I be a professional writer right now? Would I have an agent? A book deal? (There’s an old, old message in my “Other” folder on Facebook from a publisher asking me if I’d be interested in writing a book. I never followed up.)

If I hadn’t stopped writing, would I be safe?

***

At the XOXOFest closing party, I was talking with my friend Casey about Anita Sarkeesian. She’d spoken at the festival despite the numerous threats to her life and family she’d received in response to her video series about women in gaming culture, and Casey and I were discussing how impressed we were by her work, her tenacity and fortitude. I told Casey that if I had to deal with what Sarkeesian has, I would just have curled up into a ball on my bathroom floor and stayed there forever. No way would I have been able to continue my work as she has.

And I guess I didn’t continue my work. Granted, that was more about my depression than my online creeps, and my online creeps were of a different caliber and much smaller magnitude than hers are, but I can still see the comparison.

I realized while talking with Casey that in not writing about my online creeps back in 2000-2004, I missed an opportunity to expand (start?) the discussion about What It’s Like For Women On The Interwebs. What it was like is that I wrote about myself, about being a college student and a waitress, about traveling, about living with depression and anxiety, and people (men) thought this meant that I owed them something. But I don’t owe anyone anything. I’m not sure what Sarkeesian’s harassers want from her (silence? an apology? I doubt they actually know what they want), but she doesn’t owe them anything either.

I’m glad that other people are now writing and talking about this issue and doing it better than I could have.

owning it: snark, sincerity and panic at XOXOFest

xoxofest opening

xoxofest opening

On Friday, after the opening remarks at XOXO festival, I decided it was time for a nap. I’d been walking and talking and drinking and socializing in Portland for two days already; I was exhausted, things had stopped making sense, and I knew it would only get worse if I didn’t try to relax. So I went back to my room at the AirB&B, got in bed, and stared at the insides of my eyelids for two and a half hours. I couldn’t fall asleep. My heart and my thoughts were scrambling to see which could go at a faster pace.

But there was no point in lying there awake when I was on a trip, right? I got up, grabbed my things, and got on a bus to meet some friends. I texted a few people to see if they were still where I thought they’d be, but I didn’t hear back. Where were they? Would they be there when I arrived? Had they forgotten about me? Did my phone really even work? Not knowing what else to do, I got off the bus downtown and walked towards my transfer stop.

And then I started crying. At first it was just a little lump in my throat, then some tears in my eyes, and then I was holding back sobs. I could feel my heartbeat throughout my entire body. I couldn’t calm down. I was all alone in an unfamiliar city, and I was a mess. I thought about calling a cab, but then I’d have to talk to the driver. I thought about walking all the way back to my room, but then I’d have to talk to the lady who owned the house. I was so embarrassed. Another woman at the stop noticed me and looked like she might say something, but I turned away. The bus came, and again, not knowing what else to do, I got on it.

When I got off at my second stop, I was in a neighborhood I’d never seen before. I couldn’t find my friends, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to, because by now I could barely breathe. I sat down on a bench and looked at my phone, but I still hadn’t heard from anyone. I was all alone in an unfamiliar city and nobody knew where I was, but it didn’t matter because nobody cared. I sobbed.

I could’ve sat on that bench forever. I was too frightened to get up, and I wouldn’t have known what to do once I got up anyway. Should I take the bus back? Walk back? Keep trying to find people? No matter what I did, everyone would see that I’d been crying, and that wouldn’t work. Why could all my friends handle these things and I couldn’t? Why had I even bothered to come?

I started thinking about maybe just going straight to the airport and taking a standby flight back to Austin, when I realized that there was someone in town who had seen me cry before, and he had a car with him. I texted Ryan.

Alison: Did Jenny take your rental car?
Ryan: It’s down here with us by Ground Kontrol [bar/arcade where there was a party] – I think she’ll be taking it soon. What’s up?
Alison: I came to meet some friends but I can’t find them and I’m pretty far away and they aren’t texting me back and I seem to be having a panic attack.
Ryan: hmm Huff was heading that way. Where are you exactly?
Alison: Hoyt and 21st. I texted him but he didn’t respond.
Ryan: Take a cab to Ground Kontrol, I’ll meet you there.
Alison: Ok getting cash.
Alison: Can you come out when I get there
Ryan: already out.

It helped to have someone tell me what to do, someone who was expecting me. I got up from the bench and looked around for an ATM, but first I found a Trader Joe’s, the sight of which I found unreasonably comforting. At Trader Joe’s I bought some trail mix and got cash back. The cashier said, “How’s your day going so far?” Great, I said.

I called a cab, and when I got in and gave the address, the driver said, “How’s your day going so far?” Great, I said. We got to Ground Kontrol where Ryan was waiting outside. I paid, got out of the cab, and immediately started crying again, in that sort of floodgates-opened way that happens when someone sympathizes. Why does nobody care, why can everyone handle things that I can’t, what’s wrong with me, that sort of thing, all came rushing out.

“I know that all of these trains of thought are a result of mental illness, but that doesn’t make them go away,” I said to Ryan, “and I don’t know how to make them go away! Do I not already take enough medication? What’s it going to take to make me normal?” We started walking down the street, where of course we ran into somebody we knew.

“Hey, what are you guys doing?” Sandy said.

“We’re going this way!” I choked out. I pointed in a random direction and started walking ahead a little, hoping Sandy couldn’t see me crying behind my sunglasses.

But it didn’t matter if he could see the tears, because my distress was pretty obvious. When he and Ryan caught up to me, Sandy said, “Are you okay?”

“Not even remotely,” I said. Sandy gave me a little pat on the back, and he and Ryan kept talking as we walked. I walked along in silence for a bit, and then joined in the conversation once or twice. When Sandy broke off to go do something else, I had calmed down enough to realize that being around other people and listening to them talk about other things was helping to pull me out of my own head.

frowny face day

i wear my sunglasses at night

So Ryan and I met some friends for dinner, where luckily we were seated at the bar so I could sit on the end and hide my puffy eyes behind sunglasses and not participate in conversation too much. I felt a little better, so I went along to a party at an advertising agency, where people actually complimented me on the sunglasses I was still wearing even though it was night. I drank a beet juice cocktail and talked to a few people and laughed and it was good.

And then I had a few realizations and made some decisions.

1. It’s time to own it.

I spent an inordinate amount of time and energy during my panic attack trying to make sure nobody knew it was happening. I was afraid to take cabs or go back to the house or call anyone because I didn’t want people to see me like that. I thought about texting around to see if anyone had a Xanax I could take, but I didn’t because then people would know I needed it. When Ryan and I ran into Sandy, I was mortified despite the fact that Sandy is a perfectly wonderful person who no doubt has friends or loved ones who have had panic attacks.

But what’s the point of doing all that pretending? I write about depression and anxiety here, so most people know I deal with it. Why do I care so much if they know exactly when I deal with it? I used a lot of emotional resources I didn’t have in trying to pretend, when I should have just been like, “Hey, guys, I’m having a panic attack. Can someone either come get me or tell me where to meet them for maybe a walk or a decaf coffee or something?” If anyone thought poorly of me, they could just fuck right off.

When I say it’s time to own it, I don’t mean that it’s time to make everyone stop what they’re doing and focus all their energy on me. It’s not an attention thing. I just mean that it shouldn’t be a big deal to say, hey, I’m not doing that great. Let’s keep walking, talk amongst yourselves, and I will calm down shortly. And maybe from now on it won’t be a big deal.

2. It’s time to get real.

The subtext of all the negative thoughts I had when freaking out was lost on me at the time, but given a day, I was able to sort it out.

Has everyone forgotten about me?
Why does nobody respond?
Why does nobody care about me?

All of those thoughts have their roots in a sort of self-absorption that, while I can’t control it when I’m panicking, isn’t an ideal way to be otherwise. I’m the protagonist of my own life, but I’m not the protagonist of the world, and other people have their own problems that have nothing to do with me. I found out later that of the people I hadn’t been able to find during my panic attack, one was searching for his lost luggage, one was wandering around town with a dead phone, and the third had gone for a much-needed nap, which I didn’t know because I was texting her old phone number. Nobody was thinking, “Fuck Alison.” They were all just living their lives.

And anyway, I shouldn’t frame everything that happens to me in terms of what other people can do for me. I should think about what I can do for them. At the very least, I should tell people I appreciate them.

a shop door, favorited

a shop door, favorited

So I spent Saturday handing out some word favorites. When someone did something nice, I said so. When someone told a story from their life to help me feel better about a story I told, I let them know it helped. Most people got off easy, with a “Hey, it was very observant and helpful of you to notice that problem and fix it,” or a “Thanks for making me feel less lame about XYZ,” or a “I love having you and Cinnamon as conference roommates!”

A few people got a speech. The speech always ended with me telling the person how much I value them, but it still took a pretty long speech to get there. I talked Warren’s ear off about how our brains try to trick us into insecurities and about how people need to be more sincere. Rusty’s speech was in the form of an outline that was like

  1. blah
  2. blah
    1. blah
    2. blah
    3. blah
      1. blah
      2. blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

or something. Oh, and during most of these speeches, I cried a little. But that was okay, because I’M OWNING IT.

(It’s not lost on me that giving people a giant speech about my problems in order to tell them I think they’re neat is nothing if not self-absorbed. Baby steps, though.)

3. If I’m not familiar with your genuineness, I don’t care about your snark.

xoxofest at yu contemporary

xoxofest at yu contemporary

I spent Sunday in a sort of relaxed stupor. Mostly I sat at a table on the first floor of the building where XOXO was being held, puttering around on my phone (I have a smartphone now! I’ll be back to defend myself later), writing, or talking to people whenever they came by. Ryan sat with me for awhile, and we picked up a conversation we’d started a few months ago about Twitter comedy. I’d told Ryan that I didn’t like so-called Twitter Comedy, that thing where people just tweet a bunch of jokes that are So! Carefully! Crafted! and sometimes funny, but don’t ultimately mean anything to me. He’d asked me to be more specific, but I couldn’t at the time.

That day, Ariel had tweeted a link to this article, which sort of boiled it down for me. Twitter Comedy feels like it’s all coming from one general viewpoint, one I agree with but get tired of hearing about. Ryan said that maybe my problem is that I don’t really do a lot of that boring stuff mentioned in the article. I spend my time writing, reading, or making tangible objects while watching old TV shows. He’s right that I don’t do all the same things as Scott Simpson’s Boring People, but I do recognize myself as one of them to an extent. I’m an atheist with fancy jeans who likes steel-cut oats and Mexican Coke, and I definitely do not stop talking.

Then we got into a discussion about snark. I said that Twitter Comedy reminds me of that thing people do where they make fun of things because it’s easier than saying what they really think. A whole lot of that goes on at web-related conventions, both SXSW and XOXO, and I’ve always had a hard time with it. Part of the reason, I think, is that snark belies the fact that the snarker (and the snarkee for that matter) is a real person with feelings. We’re all real people with feelings, but if someone’s only made of jokes as far as I can tell, I have no evidence of Real Person or Feelings and therefore have a hard time remembering that those things are there. When I’m surrounded by a lot of snark, I end up feeling like I’m the only person whose feelings get away from them sometimes. I’m the only person who deals with depression, or panic attacks, or sitting down on a bench and being scared to stand up. Everyone else is fine and wonderful and perfect and has no problems.

But, Ryan said, you follow a lot of people on Twitter who make snarky jokes. What makes them different? And that was when I blurted out the thing that boiled it all down for me: “If I don’t know your genuineness, I don’t give a shit about your snark.” And that’s really it. To enjoy your jokes about how everything sucks, I need proof that you do not actually think everything sucks. Or, if you do think everything sucks, I need proof that you have a personal reason for thinking everything sucks. I have a lot of jokey Twitter friends that I might unfollow if I didn’t know them otherwise.

Obviously this is just my personal take on snark. I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who don’t need proof that people are real like I do. I’m a very fragile and sensitive person (OWNING IT), but I know not everyone is like me. And I also know that snark is something people use deliberately to avoid the emotional peril of being a real person with feelings. If that’s what you’re doing, I understand, because I’ve done it too.

4. It’s time to get out of my own head.

Because the thing is, people don’t just offer up genuineness apropos of nothing. They offer it up as part of an exchange of ideas, or an exchange of vulnerability, or similar. I can get as angry as I want at people being snarky instead of genuine, but how do I fix it?

I fix it by asking people about themselves. Where are you from? Have you been to Portland before? Do you like the festival so far? What have you liked most? It’d be hard for someone to answer those types of questions in a non-genuine way, and hearing those answers will help me see people as real, will help me get out of my own head, will help me stop thinking constantly about what other people can do for me.

So, if I met you in Portland but didn’t ask you anything about yourself, I’m sorry. I should have, because you are interesting and cool! But sometimes I live in the back of my head instead of in the front.

(I know that a lot of the talks at XOXO addressed vulnerability, and I wish I had seen them, but I only had a festival pass. I look forward to watching them online and finding out that other people said all this stuff before, and better than I did, and recently!)

(I don’t always love to get comments on my posts about health, mental or otherwise, but in this case I welcome them. In fact I might feel weird if nobody says anything. SAY STUFF, PLEASE.)

this year’s girl

So my friend Brad died last January.  I didn’t mention it here for whatever reason, but he died.  I’d seen him every March at SXSW Interactive since 2001, and since he lived in St. Louis we’d meet up there sometimes when I went to visit family. One night he took me to a piano bar, an awesome local cafe, and then a pancake house, and I didn’t get back to my aunt’s place until 3am.

A bunch of us had a sort of memorial party for him at SXSW in March, which I think was good for everyone.  It doesn’t solve the problem of how we’re all going to deal with Brad’s absence this March and the Marches after that, but still. It helped.

At 20×2 in March they paid tribute to Brad by showing this video from 2005, in which Brad answers the question, “What’s the word?” Even if you’re not the video-watching sort, you should watch this one.

Brad Graham – What’s The Word 20×2 v.5.0 from 20×2 on Vimeo.

I’m not a big fan of new year’s resolutions, either. I’m firmly in the, “If you want to start doing something or not doing something, just fucking start already” camp. But I like the idea of a year having a theme of sorts.

My plan to quit allowing my fear of failure to own me has been going relatively well, but I’ve got a related problem. When it comes to things I want to achieve, I always think I’m not good enough to achieve them. I think that someone else would do it better, or someone else will do it first. Or when I look at the things others have done, I think, “They did that, but I never could.”

So my theme for this year is going to be, “Why not me?” Whenever I start to think that I won’t be good enough to achieve X or Y or I don’t have the right stuff to do something well, I’m going to stop and ask myself, “Why not me? Why can’t I be the person who does it?”

Because I already know the answer to that question. The answer is that there’s no reason why it can’t be me. It absolutely CAN be me! The perfect person to get something done is the one who does it, and does it well. And if I want to, I can be that person.

Thanks, Brad.