So, here I am with a new online journal, I’m not really a fan of the word “blog” for some reason so we’ll just say online journal. I wanted to start a new one and hopefully do a better job at allowing myself to archive the things in my life in a way that I feel comfortable as the public thing that online journals are… and make use of those nifty tags and stuff.
In the summer of 2000 I noticed there were a lot of zine people starting journals on diaryland and I started reading them. I was living in a tiny shared mud room in a huge old punkhouse in Portland while working at the nickel arcade on Belmont and attempting to be in a shitty pop punk band. My partner whom I shared the room with was away on tour. You didn’t walk so much as climb into our room that had everything piled up to the ceiling and up the walls, two of which were all windows. The room froze in the winter and boiled in the summer.
It was a great summer. I had my tiny room to myself where I stashed my food in my room so I didn’t have to see many of my housemates, I rode 10 miles a day checking my post box and heading to band practice, played a ton of pinball after work and Tony Hawk with my housemates while drinking Portland beer at night. It was good times! It seems that in July I climbed over the bed and into the seat at the computer to use dial up and finally start my own Diaryland.
I added lots of friends who also made zines and messed the page up with my crappy knowledge of html adding lots of random “rings” do people still have “rings” anymore? This was a new way to document my life after years of committing things to my notebook. I obsessed over my site meter wondering who these people were who were reading my stuff. I even set a trap for my ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend after I found out she has been Internet stalking my site and instant messaging my friends.
Two funny things with that: 1) She took the bait and contacted me… as long as I didn’t write about her in my zine. 2) That was Paul’s girlfriend at the time… and now Paul and I are back together.
We eventually moved out of the Dustbin and into our own house in North Portland. Zine kids were making the jump to livejournal so I started my own livejournal and didn’t want to use my name. I chose thinkbettersick, because it is a line from one of my favorite Discount songs. That was in 2002 and by 2004 I quit using Diaryland except for the ocassional update or promo post. I also started a few other livejournals: alexwrekk, sleepbetercrazy, and shippinglog for various reasons
And then came Friendster which everyone ditched for myspace where everyone also started on for their zine and now there is We Make Zines. I also started a blog for Stolen Sharpie Revolution, International Zine Month, and Nobody Cares About Your Stupid Zine Podcast.
That is almost a decade of my life in 1’s and 0’s through various filters and still, that’s not really me. Well, this page is my new filter. I still plan on keeping my livejournal, most of those entries are friends only. I write a lot more candidly there. My livejournal feels like the secret room tucked behind the bookcase and I like it that way. I plan to polish things up a bit for your digestion here and use tags to try to keep things organized.
Alex Wrekk 
FIRST! Man, Diaryland! That takes me back. Friendster always sucked, sort of a low rent Facebook. I didn’t know anyone outside of Silicon Valley gave a damn.
What boggles my mind is to look back on the vast electronica and see how much my friends have changed. Maybe it’s easier to compare their differences against one’s own,