dear internet, it's me. again.

an introduction — entry 01

there was a time when writing about my life online was the only exciting thing that was going on for me. i was a new girl in a catholic high school and was struggling to make friends. i was a quiet, gawky, and timid 15-year-old who can hardly hold a normal conversation, and trust me, i wish i were saying this to sound quirky and relatable, but i really was.

life was pretty bleak, and the only thing that comforted me was a little personal space on the internet. i remember rushing home from school every single day, powering up our family-shared windows xp desktop even before i get to change from my school uniform, logging on tumblr, and writing long, wandering blog posts accompanied with photos taken with a 6-megapixel digital camera.

this was during a completely different time on the internet. personal feelings were written in detailed, long-form posts without the fear of oversharing or concern for seo rankings. content wasn’t made to earn money or gain sponsorships and selfies were called #gpoy.

my blog felt like an alternate reality where everything was easier. i didn’t have to struggle to make connections or holding conversations. on that little corner, i started them.

i kept the blog until late 2014 or at least i tried to. at that time, i was already nineteen and majoring in communication and journalism, and it was hard to write for leisure when you’re already doing the same thing every day in college.

eventually, the digital landscape evolved and almost at the same time, people quit and moved on.

today, the things we share and consume on the internet are a lot more different. people have veered away from lengthy diary-like entries and have moved to snarky one-liners on twitter, curated instagram feeds, and weekly youtube vlogs.

but i’m exhausted from all that. i’m completely disillusioned with social media, and all i want is the internet of the 2000s back — where everything’s casual, messy, and no one was in it for money.

i no longer want to watch instagram stories of someone stirring their morning coffee, i want to read about the last normal thing they did before quarantine or the story behind the latest photo on their phone’s gallery.

i yearn for heartfelt and borderline oversharing stories. i long for unapologetically vulnerable entries. i don’t care if it’s in filipino, or in english, or both. i don’t care if it’s written hurriedly or if it’s just a one-paragraph account of something they thought about during their shower.

i want to be inside someone else’s mind, through random revelations and mundane reflections in written form.

restarting

i’ve already lost count of how many times i tried to come back. it feels like i’ve written countless variations of this “first post introduction” on different platforms— on wordpress, blogger, dayre, i’ve tried them all.

i’ve created countless digital spaces with the hope that maybe this one will finally stick. but none of these attempts did. i don’t even know why i am still hell-bent on having a personal place on the internet. is it because of my inability to share in real life? is it because of my constant need of instant gratification? is it both?

i think i found the best answer from emily gould on her nytimes cover story: “people who maintain blogs are doing it for some of the same reasons i do, they like the idea that there’s a place where a record of their existence is kept — a house with an always-open door where people who are looking for you can check on you, compare notes with you and tell you what they think of you. sometimes that house is messy, sometimes horrifyingly so. in real life, we wouldn’t invite any passing stranger into these situations, but the remove of the internet makes it seem okay.”

i don’t know if it’s because i recently binge-watched the entirety of sex and the city and i want to write about my life like carrie bradshaw or if this is one of the many side effects of being cooped up at home for 80 something (and counting) days, but i woke up one morning, and i wanted to try again.

welcome to tender corner! and i hope this one finally sticks.