My Eighth Bloggiversary

Eight years ago today I started my blog. It actually started as a livejournal blog which I used to chronicle my third (and successful) attempt to get onto a polyphasic sleep schedule. I had no readers and had no intention of attracting any. I had just remembered how hilarious my attempts to get on the schedule were in the past, how hard it was to remember the memories created in varies states of sleep deprivation, and thought that recording the experience might be a good idea.

At that point in time, polyphasic sleep was a hot topic. The internet was dotted with anonymous reports of success and attributed reports of failure, but until Steve Pavlina did it, no public blogger had ever gotten on the schedule and written about it. Steve has a large audience, so all of a sudden lots of people were interested in polyphasic sleep, and many of them found my site.

Before I knew it, I had a hundred or so people reading my blog every day. I saw an opportunity, and without really thinking about the ramifications of attracting an audience, I started sharing some of my crazy stories. The Ghetto Indoor Pool story hit number one spot on Digg (I think it was one of the top 10 stories that year), and I got a ton of readers from that. Before I knew it, I had five hundred, and then a thousand daily readers.

Eventually I moved to my own domain, 'betterthanyourboyfriend.com', which I had bought because I had a half-cocked plain to put up "lost dog" style flyers all over the city trying to find girls I would want to date. Eventually I bought tynan.net and moved the blog there because a survey showed that no one wanted to link to a site called "Better than your Boyfriend". Finally a year ago, with the sleuthing help of Todd, I bought tynan.com, where this blog will probably live for the rest of its years.

Sometimes, Everything Sucks.

Usually, I feel really blessed that I'm able to travel 15 hours and 19 minutes drive from my family for college and I'm still able to keep in touch with them through the internet and my phone and all the wonderful technology we have today. But sometimes, I think it makes it worse. Maybe I would miss my friends and family more if I had to wait for letters to arrive to hear from them, there's really no way to know.

Today, I really feel like the technology we have access to makes it worse. Having the ability to know how someone is feeling, what they're doing, and where they are, practically any moment of the day can be really heartbreaking.

I've been thinking a lot about a great friend of mine from back home. I've been crying on and off today thinking about him and being excited (and also nervous) to see him again in 6 days after not seeing him for 4 months. I've been texting him, asking him how he's doing, what he's up to, trying to connect with him through the distance. He takes a long time to respond and when he does, he replies with short generic phrases. I know that he misses me too, that's not my concern. It's just sometimes really frustrating to be having a really bad day, full of missing someone, and then to find that the person you're missing so much is having a full and busy day, hanging out with their friends and laughing and enjoying themselves. They're not really missing you.

As much as I want to seek comfort from him that it'll be okay and that I'll see him soon, I don't want to pull him from his fun and bring down his mood. I end up feeling jealous, and sometimes worthless- like I cant have fun without him, like I dont have any good friends other than him. While I know these things aren't true, I still constantly compare my life to his and I end up putting myself down because of it.

I can't help but feel that the immediacy of the contact we're able to have despite our distance adds to this. I just don't see this being a problem in the days of letter writing.