I’m glad I have a medium

The monitor shimmered momentarily. Then, the image changed to a torch-lit scene of brutal riots. Tijuana residents were throwing Molotov cocktails through store windows. There was looting, severe language, beatings, a gang rape of a local TV anchorman and— at the center of the scene — an old man kicking a puppy down the street.
“Ah, I take it we were reelected. And look: the crowd is excited! Good, good!”

—Excerpt from my novel

I started a viewspaper way back in the day (I was 14). The story goes thusly: I had a lot to say and nobody to say it to. We didn’t have the Internet then and the post office didn’t want me coming around anymore, so I had to come up with something else. One day I was on the phone with a girl I liked ((She turned out to be a lesbian. That is a surprisingly common occurrence in my life.)), and I asked her if she wanted to read something I had written. She said she would and hung up ((She probably finished the conversation and said goodbye first, but she’s not telling the story here, I am.)). Then I realized something that should have been fairly obvious: I hadn’t written anything yet. I rushed to produce something worth reading that wouldn’t embarrass me ((It did.)). I stayed up all night, but when I went to school the next morning, I had the very first viewspaper ever. Everyone loved it that initial time ((and never again)), so I kept writing it for six years.

I used to say then that I couldn’t imagine a life worth living if I didn’t have a way to tell my stories to the world ((For those of you curious as to what was in this viewspaper, please see my blog.)).

One year, I started a weekly e-mail for fans that were not in the area. I would write an e-mail every week (I strove to make it different from the viewspaper just in case anybody had access to both). Eventually the e-mail turned into a group and the group into a community. It was pretty nice for a while. There were a lot of regulars that would comment back and forth on my e-mails and eventually on each others points.

Then I started a blog: A Pixelated Mind. You’ve been there, I think. At least you know what it’s like. It’s nice.

For four months, I had a biweekly viewspaper, a weekly group, a daily blog, and I was also working part-time and going to school full-time. I phased out the group in favor of the blog. Eventually, as I phased out my personality in favor of work, I also phased out my viewspaper. It had become too hard to continue to write it. Eventually, I hope to expand my blog’s archive to include everything I wrote then as well.

What I love about the Internet is how I can get my words out to the world with no resistance and very little overhead. I’ve noticed in my life that I have a need to express myself, be it to make people laugh or think. I also find it easier to think when I have something out in writing. So, if only because it prevents my head from exploding with unexpressed teen angst, I am thankful for… media.

The monitor shimmered momentarily. Then, the image changed to a torch-lit scene of brutal riots. Tijuana residents were throwing Molotov cocktails through store windows. There was looting, severe language, beatings, a gang rape of a local TV anchorman and— at the center of the scene — an old man kicking a puppy down the street.…