What’s happened since I last wrote a blog entry at sooz.com several months ago? I started a new job as web editor at the Phoenix, became an even more crazed super fan of OldJack (ammmmazing Rock ‘n’ Roll Rumble performance!) and as of this month, I’ve now spent seventeen years in Boston. Seventeen!
It was seventeen years ago this month that I packed as much as I could in three bags, got on a plane and left Nebraska for Boston. I wish I had a photo of my stellar packing skills: everything from clothes, some plates I stole from the college cafeteria, cd player, posters, etc. It was supposed to be a summer trip and then I’d return to Nebraska and finish college. Except I didn’t move back and I never finished college. That “Internet thing” happened and I kept getting jobs working in web/tech. I also fell in love with the Boston rock music scene — and here I am, seventeen years later.
Everyone always asks how I ended up in Boston. Most assume I went to college here. When I was a junior at Doane College (Crete, NE), a friend told me we had to get something called an email address. I had no idea what she was talking about. Eventually I figured out what it was and found email lists for fans of bands I was into at the time. I made friends online — one in particular through the 10,000 Maniacs mailing list and then several more on a BBS called ISCABBS.
Everything in my life changed when I got online on whatever day that was in September of 1993. The house I stayed in for the summer was a room sublet via a friend on ISCABBS who was studying abroad. Everything was arranged online and fortunately when I arrived it wasn’t a cruel joke — I actually had a place to live.
Every day since then has been an adventure.
[The photo is a dirt road outside of Scribner, Nebraska, near where I grew up.]