Trying to file these stacks of papers--going through things in my filing cabinet from back in '95, some stuff from earlier--letters, poems, things; wondering what happened to the people I knew and sort of knew, marveling at the me that was, the me that is; wondering how different everything will seem in yet another ten years. Can't believe it's only been ten years since I left Texas, left "home" (not Texas, but my parents). The difference from 0 to 10 is quite significant. The difference from 17 to 27... Yes. Quite significant. I have trouble understanding the me then, figuring out how I passed my time (lots of leisure; even the occasional boredom! I played video games. Read comic books. Ran a reasonably sized bbs--played a LOT of door games, chatted with folks, ... Man. I was pretty damned social, online. I guess I still am, though the chatting's mostly gone to delayed-commenting via livejournal, mailing lists, etc. IM while working on other things, but that's very rarely a "real" conversation. But it's interesting how back then it was so cool to be able to chat with _one_ other person over the computer because their modem dialed my modem...

So many crushes gone by the wayside with nary a backwards glance. So many opportunities blithely ignored. So much taken for granted, so much wrongfully assumed.

So much life.

Ten years.

Ten years from now, I scare me.

Does anyone know Blood Doll, Malaclypse the Elder, Mordekainen, Decay or Meltdown running Renegade BBS? Does anyone know the me that was then? Were you on TimeMUSE? Or PernMUSH? Or anywhere else I happened to be? Did you happen to be one of the people that first introduced me to MUDs at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana? ((how would you know?))