WebMutt

[yes. i suck. i know.]

This is my h2g2 page yada yada yada.

I really need to get back in here. I really need to do a lot of things.

Here's my excuse of the moment: H2g2 loads too slow for me, even though I'm on a DSL now. Well heck, the servers are all the way on the other side of the Atlantic. What do I expect? I thought maybe the problem was on their end or my end, but I think it's an indication that h2g2's servers are just busy, because more and more people are logging in and participating.

H2g2.com is still and continues to be a growing success! And kudos to everyone participating!

Peta wrote me the other day, just to catch me up on the goings on here and also in her kind way let me know I was a little missed and to get my ass back in here. I've been elsewhere admittedly, and I've been looking for something like h2g2 but not quite. I sometimes think I found it, but then I'm always proven wrong.

I always wind up back here. The Prodigal Reluctant SubEditor Returns. However, I can't seem to stay in one place and roost on the Internet. I keep moving around skittishly. What am I looking for? Really? Do I want community? Do I want a clean interface? Do I want a place to rant and ramble? Just a place to leave scattered thoughts hoping eventually they'll congeal into something else? Am I leaving bread crumbs of my brain all over the Web so I can find my way back out? Am I talking just to hear myself talk or do I have something meaningful to say?

I think I'm just talking to hear myself talk online. And I'm still wondering if I'm content with that. I think I want community, but I want it on my terms, and that seems counterproductive. It's like trying to get the other kids on the playground to play your game by your rules. It just doesn't work that way. You either come off eventually like a bully, or a loser, or both.

So for the most part in recent months, when I'm not offline trying to juggle everything in the real world, I've stepped outside myself and looked at myself. Observed my actions and inactions as objectively and coldly as I can. I've noticed something. I've done this for a long time but I've only recently been able to consciously put it into words. I'm an idea person with a big mouth. I come up with an idea, and that's that. I'm like,

"you know it would be really neat if this could happen. And then we could do such and such and whatever problem presently happening right now would be solved. It would probably be replaced with all new problems but if we did this idea of mine, it would make things just a whole lot hoopier."

And I do this a LOT. I've been examining just where I've been online in the last few years. What parts of the Web still have my mark on them, and you know what I've discovered? I'm like a flea-bitten stray on the streets of the Information Superhighway. I'm walking around sticking my nose in where it doesn't belong, sniffing around, making a mess occasionally but for the most part I just walk into chat rooms and message boards, listen for awhile, bark incessantly at something or other, and then move on to the next place. I do have places I like that welcome me in that I go back to, but for the most part I'm just a stray runt marking my territory. Spraying the corners of the Web with my spew.

I'm like Benji in someone else's movie.

I appreciate everyone who welcomes my words and thoughts into your computer screens. I would like to apologize to those who find them unwelcome. I think in comparison to some people I really have nothing important to say. Still, I continue to exist just like a stray dog. Hopefully I'll avoid the dog catchers, and continue to find people who will occasionally throw me a bone.

Thank you Peta. It is nice to feel welcome here. Even if sometimes I don't follow through, and let people down. *shrug*

Thanks for reading. I'll be around, but us webmutts can't sit still for too long.