Yesterday I spent a lot of time cleaning up formatting and broken links on my old Xanga blog entries that make up the posts from 2004-2013 on this site. I am so grateful that I have this treasure trove of writing. This was me from age 24 to 33, struggling to define and build the foundation of my life. I am so happy I captured it. Reading through caused so many of my amorphous, ethereal memories to be injected with hilarious color and detail that would have otherwise have been lost to time.

But holy shit, was it an overload of bittersweet nostalgia.

One of the best things about this exercise was reading all the old comments on my posts. They are restored now too. I miss the friendly support and encouragement from Xanga friends. These relationships were meaningful, but also had a parasocial element, where you didn’t know each other beyond the mutual assimilation of personal writing. That pseudo-anonymity was the secret sauce. It provided a veneer of psychological safety to freely muse and vent. It allowed deep social connection without real life logistics.

I am grateful to wonderplum, Kalligenia, lizamae, Sarahndipidee, tania_li, TheParkN8r, peaceofmymind84, coconutjules, Meghantothemax, reyrey12, shygirLuv, kwasham, Happytalia, shadowed_perfections and doraemon08. All those Xanga comments were little gifts, and I treasure them.