My sister-in-law just started a blog to document her experience as an American student in Prague. Reading her first post gave me a flashback to 2004 when I first started writing here. The initial purpose was to chronicle my travels and keep up with friends while spending a year working on my Arabic at the University of Jordan.

I started out simple. I had no idea that participating in this online community would alter my worldview, change the course of my career, cause me to move to the Midwest… and turn a commenter into my husband.

I got online in 1997 at the age of 14. It was before the parental hysteria had broken out about the potential danger of online predators so I was pretty much given free reign. With a computer in my room I spent most evenings dialed in to chatrooms and instant messengers. I had lots of ‘real life’ friends (who did not get my obsession) but I also bonded deeply with the folks I met online.

But it was more than that.

Those digital relationships shaped me… probably in ways I’ll never fully understand.

My first date was online – like most people remember the name of who they first kissed, I expect I’ll never forget his AOL handle. We dated from 15-17yrs old and only met in person once when I was 18, after we had broken up. We were both early adopters and while most of our peers thought we were weird & geeky for spending so much time on the computer – we got each other, and believed someday the wall between the virtual and concrete would come crashing down.

And we were right.

Now nearly every person I’ve ever met uses email, and most have Facebook accounts.

Even my mom.

So, thanks to my first internet boyfriend I stuck around this place. Made it my home. Even saved up & bought a webcam in ’99 so we could talk face-to-face… which was less like live streaming and more like taking a series of photos.

Many of the people I’ve met online through the years have provided life-altering interactions. They’ve also become my best friends.

So, in order to honor those people and do the stories justice I’ve decided to turn this into a series of posts. {Links will be added below as the posts go live.}

Addicted to being connected

Part 1: The Great Depression: How I survived college, with a lot of help from Yahoo! Messenger

Part 2: Internet Dating: Meeting my husband through my blog

Part 3: Finding Business Partners Online: Establishing trust through YouTube

Part 4: Mom Bloggers: Sharing heart + passion with other parents

*This post was inspired by SOBCon‘s BlogIt EarnIt question for #SOBCon2010