Post 1: What is my Current Online Presence?

Hello everyone! It's been great to see everyone now that we are back on campus. I look forward to meeting everyone who is new to the program and to reconnecting with everyone who is returning. I have taken an extra semester before graduating in December, so it's nice to see familiar faces in addition to the new ones. Hope you've all been doing well! :)

For this week's blog post, as you know, we are discussing our online presence. While thinking about what to write for this blog post, I realized that my online presence is pretty substantial, which is the complete opposite of what it was when I was younger. Starting middle school, I had zero online presence. I had no desire for or even much knowledge of the internet; however, soon I started to realize that practically everyone was online. It quickly started to feel as though even socializing with my friends was difficult to do without an online presence. I remember feeling like everyone was on one channel and I was on another, which made me feel pretty lonely. In response, towards the end of middle school and throughout high school, I became very engrossed in my online presence. I wanted to make up for the time that I felt I had lost and I was also worried that if I wasn't connected to people enough, no one would see me or interact with me. Now I look back and wonder why I feared being alone so much. I think when we're younger, sometimes our problems seem like the entire world, as small as they might be. Anyway, as I became more engrossed in my online presence, I started to realize how draining it is and also how much I didn't like exposing so much of myself to people (some of which I didn't even know very well). It's exhausting putting yourself out there and comparing yourself to people all the time, so I've been working on limiting my online presence. For this reason, I am a bit nervous for the website assignment, as I have wanted to start to be online less and am also unsure of what to even put on a website. I still enjoy sharing pictures and connecting with people through the internet, especially with those in my family who I have not been able to see for many years. However I've been striving towards being more present and trying to connect with others in different, healthier ways. It's been difficult since it's something different to my "routine", but the small changes I've made have already relieved some of my stress.