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a business shutdown and...well, what else was there to do when I wasn't looking for work or taking online college courses? So I had a MySpace. I still had all of my portal accounts, but the chat had kind of fallen by the wayside (there's only so much you can talk about when you don't really DO anything). I was starting to suspect that simply having the accounts was becoming a hobby, a badge of twisted pride, something to freak my friends out with.

Then the big Web 2.0 boom hit, and I started trying to monetize my content with ads and finding pay blogs. I found work again, but I started to get tired of people yelling at me for things I wasn't responsible for. I kept secretly hoping I would be able to find a computer-oriented job where I could spend all my time with machines and almost none interacting with human beings - well, at least not face to face. Typing was so much easier...I could compose my thoughts and even add photos and music! I was also finding all the niche social networking sites...Bebo for personalities, Facebook for professional and school contacts...I was creating custom icons and wallpapers, scouring the Net for stories and figuring out how to juggle them between blogs, while trying to think of interesting things to write about my life. Social news sites? You bet I was there. Digg, Reddit, Shoutwire... Social bookmarking? del.icio.us, Furl, Clipmarks... I was all over the place. RSS feed aggregation just made it that much easier to share things with people. I created animated avatars, mashed-up feeds, tagged posts, BACKtagged posts, embedded videos... Oh, I still went out, but when you hang out with real people you keep encountering drama between your cohorts all the time, and after a while that gets really tiresome. So eventually I stopped going out except on rare occasions. I made a whole life for myself online...somewhat sloppily managed, but a presence nonetheless.

So yes, I guess I am addicted to the Internet, and I refuse to admit I have a problem. Here I sit, hoping to find something to do on the Internet that pays, so I can just sit here and do...whatever. I really don't want to go back out into the standard work world, because even statistics show that customers have become more and more irate and I don't want to have to deal with that face to face anymore. But I can't seem to get a job with my bachelor's degree because everyone wants applicants with hands-on experience. I think I could write for a living if I just find my niche, but I can't always think of unique things to write about on a regular basis, so I just end up offering my opinions on news stories (which some people think is funny and entertaining). I gained 80 pounds and I'm probably due for my first stroke any time now. But it's okay, because what's real life compared to Internet life?

And besides, when I die, all you have to do to remember what I was like is put my username into a search engine.

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