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Welcome to yet another article in my series of things you probably never cared about anyway. This time, I'm going to answer a fairly frequently asked question. See the heading if you haven't already.

How it helps me

I never claimed that all the things on my homepage are of ultimate relevance and everyone's concern. However, many people have showed interest in what I do and what I think, and I've even received positive feedback about the articles I published earlier.

I like writing. It's a not all too complicated form of expressing yourself, and there are many things you can play with in language. I love playing, and sometimes I like talking or, in a more general way, expressing myself (that reminds me of a splendid movie called "Office Space". Did you watch it? I'm thinking about this scene in which the waitress (I can't get myself to remember her name) quits her job... whoops, back to the topic). Expressing yourself is a very subtle way of manipulating or influencing the world around you -- of course, it isn't that easy to improve the world and end all misery, but I am trying to dismiss some harmful beliefs and show people new perspectives or even whole new ways of thinking (the visionary I am... I'm not that positive about the outcome but hey, wishful thinking can vastly improve your mood at times).

That was one thing. Another is a historical reason. Now, before you start moaning and clicking on a random link to get away from boring lectures, I only said that because this particular reason of mine for creating a personal homepage came to me a few years ago, in 2001.

What's so special about 2001? Well, for one I turned 18 in August 2001 which, as you might know, officially made me an adult. While I didn't use my new status to go and empty liquor stores, that time still was a fairly important part of my personal history, because that wasn't the only thing to happen. I had finished school about two months before and I was going to have to do civil service (by law) half a month later. Oh, and I'd realised I was gay a few months before.

Truth be told, the latter was the ultimate reason why I started my homepage. Education about love and all that stuff doesn't (didn't?) really exist, so you might be able to understand I was fairly confused about it all. I managed to find all sorts of information about The Topic on the internet, but that didn't magically eradicate all my doubts and uncertainties, so I decided to do some introspection. I thought about myself (something I still do from time to time, e.g. right now) and wrote things down. Coincidentally, I started off with a little profile, just like what nearly everyone has on their websites.

OK, I confess I'm lying here. In fact, I didn't write that down while thinking about myself but because I wanted to meet other, well, gay people, in a "well, now I think I know what I want, it must be easy to find The One" sort of way (no connection to The Matrix here), and I thought that would be most efficient by letting people know who I am and what I think. Yes, I was trying to find people via the internet--I was really shy back then, thanks to a not-so-positive period in school.

Anyway, so I wrote that profile and put it online. And then I thought, well, while I'm at it, I could as well write some more stuff, some people might find it interesting. And I did so, and it was Good^(tm).

I found a way to, well, make my website a little known among the target community, and I started getting positive feedback sometimes. I really met some of the people I communicated with and we became friends, sort of. Some of them I only met a few times and never heard of again, others I still talk to sometimes. But, you guessed it, The One surprisingly failed to show up.

So here I am, having realised that this particular reason for having a personal homepage isn't a reason after all. So what I do now is have great ideas about what I could write about and pre-write it all in my head and plan to put it on my homepage and then forget about it and when I happen to remember, I'm no longer in the right mood to write it down.

I guess you're now wondering how all the things on my homepage ever made it. That's easily explained--everything you can find here is what sprang to my mind when I was near one of my computers and didn't have anything urgent to do. For example, I started writing this very essay the day I sat in some train, on the way back home after the funeral of my second grandfather. I don't think this bit of writing is influenced by the funeral, but rather by the tiresome ride on the train--I just thought I'd better occupy myself during the two-and-then-some hours of dull sitting around and I began rewriting the backbone code of my homepage. It didn't take me very long to get bored and I started thinking about the homepage itself, and the rest should be self-explanatory.

Anyway, that was quite some months ago, I think. I'm bad at remembering dates, so "quite some months ago" is all the precision you'll get. I'm only working on this again because I'm bored again. I'm sitting in a nearly empty room and there isn't much else I could do, and I'm too dull to do anything useful (like resuming my work on said backbone code).

How it may help you

I'm not all egoistic; deep in the core I have some morals and ideals that make me want to help others. If you've met me in the past, you may have noticed. In this case, I am trying to help you by telling you things on this website. Be it things you didn't know, things you saw differently, things you thought all wrong about (from my point of view, that is), whatever. If you have problems, a lot of information will help. If you want your own view of the world, a lot of information will help. A lot of information may always help... as of now, I can't think of a situation where a lot of general knowledge is harmful (apart from really exotic situations that are unlikely to ever happen, of course).

Many of my articles, including the ones I haven't written yet, deal with particular situations or parts of all day's life. You will most certainly learn how I think about things and sometimes, you may find that your own thinking will be confirmed, or even changed.

All this won't be too helpful for you if you're not happy about learning things or observing things, or even discussing things. I really prefer talking to people who do like to both contribute their point of view and accept that of others, and who are capable of improving from such exchanges, especially because I think of myself as a person who can do that, too.

Apart from that, like previously mentioned, I've been told that my writing style is fairly enjoyable, sometimes at least. This means that even if you know everything, you might still like my way of writing it. I can't guarantee you I'm really that entertaining, I'm only repeating other people's opinions here. If in doubt, see for yourself.

Two-way Transmission

Should you wish to talk to me, there are several ways to do so, including e-mail. However, you can also post comments about my articles right here and right now. Of course, there are some significant differences between sending me a mail and posting a comment on this website. For a start, you are limited (please!) in the range of topics you may talk about--the comments sections are for, well, comments about the corresponding articles only. Also, whatever you write will be accessible to everyone, right below the articles themselves, so you might want to tune down the insults just a little bit.

And now, some more history. The World Wide Web started off as a one-way service--clients retrieved information from servers, period. Today, this isn't the case any longer. Clients can get information from servers and then send other information back. We end up with an interactive service that equals what is one of the basics of humanity: talking. My homepage is part of this world-wide communication. I contribute my thoughts and I appreciate anything you give me in return. Comments are one way to do this, e-mails are another. If you know me in person, have a real talk with me (they really exist!). Or contact me via some chat network, like Jabber or IRC.

Thanks for your interest in all this. Until next time.

This article was last updated on 2004-12-21.

Comments

• 2004-05-18 16:09, Vanda: