rich dudes content with living poor (by comparison to how they grew up).
We hung up at this café called Cody’s up by my college and across the street from where I lived.
It was like an underground computer café (slash) coffee spot where upstairs it was business going on: bright inside, glasses banging, silverware ringing, conversations going, people in suits or whatever.
But through this area in the door by the last booth (where the darkness started), it was a set of spiral stairs that lead down to us [artists, musicians, tech geeks, gamers, and misfit talented rich dudes] at the bottom of Cody’s where there were computers, a mini Starbucks like bar where coffee and smoothies were made. If we wanted food, we’d call up and ease upstairs to pick up, lift our shoulders walking past these upstairs patrons and bring our food downstairs.
The owners were a husband and wife who had had two boys about 6 and 8 years old (one-the place was named after). It was nothing sometimes to wind up being an undesignated babysitter for a few hours as, the husband and wife knew and was familiar with us all.
Through that back door and across the street stood my house (and lots of others of us that hung up there). So that was pretty much our spot. It was like a lit dungeon: loud music and fat dirty bricks of wall included.
There, everybody taught everybody things and I learned my most geekyish things from my geeky friends there.
At any rate, in a conversation with Orgena (who, along with Tom, taught me how to make my book covers) Orgena and me were talking about something and I remember saying “I don’t know. They don’t have a website so I don’t know’em. Can’t trust it.”
He said, “Where’s yours?”
I got quiet.
He then said,” Don’t you believe in your work enough that it should be showcased and made into a business that people want to peep into and know about, too?”
And from there, I mingled up with some of the other geeks and their resources and we got it poppin.’
Viola! I was up.
So when reading this girls rant, instead becoming so obsessed with wanting to know her end to these means, like Orgena, I turned my question for her to myself: “Why don’t you do it? While believing in yourself and downgrading your lifestyle, you have THEE most “better not tell nobody but God,” embarrassing, unbelievable yet funny [and future] “ratchet” stories of the struggle than anybody. Why do you keep an online diary and tell’em.”
But what steered me away from doing that was that here I was in 2002 (reading this online ranter) and I had-had a website up with a three-year footprint on the web already-but unlike the rant girl (who we knew nothing about-outside of her rants) I was out there-and I didn’t want to be judged while in the middle of my grind (like I asked you to pay attention to the previous bold print and infographic, pay attention to what I just said in bold, read that infographic and …we’ll rap up my point
So you see. I gave you this whole big visual of my personal experience and that of voyeuring in on an anonymous girl ranting about her crappy experiences day by day that I never had an actual end.
Keep in mind-her online rants were updated daily in 2002-before social media. In 2002, to socialize, you basically had chatrooms and messages boards (and like me by this time), a personal website to familiarize yourself.
Although the ranter was anonymous, I came upon her site via a message board just like I was not anonymous and getting people to over to me via these boards.
The point is, by 2005 things in the world wide web changed, and I often entertained the thought (and wonder) if she was now one of these successful multi-millionaire gurus who hung around online in the early 2000’s-back before the Internet and world wide web turned into social media etc. Was she one of those guys who moved from that to this 2005 Internet transition and today-one of those? I’ve wondered if her story changed and if one day, I’m going to discover that I finally get to see this girl with these humble beginnings only to find out she is indeed one of those who made it happen whereas, in sitting right there is her experience being documented in my face, it “happening” for her seemed so so far away.
The reason I obsess over this is because that was my very first experience in watching a documented chain of events that happened in a person’s life
