Kat’s Pause 

I just got it in and it’s horrible. The aesthetics and inability to talk are one thing, that’s normal, but what bothers me is that it’s somehow triggering my gag reflexes and making me feel constantly nauseated. Any movement of my tongue makes me feel like I’m about to throw up. There’s no way I can wear this thing 24 hours a day.

Had a lovely late birthday celebration. Favourites were free dinner (friends rock!) and free birthday dessert minus the waiters’ out-of-tune singing, which I requested not be done and was very happy they obliged, much philosophical debating, and two exciting walks through dark woods to Dave’s house with minimal bug bites (if any).

Tentative plans seem to be 6:30 at East Side Mario’s in Dundas on the 29th, and ice cream afterwards, possibly followed by a movie at my house if there’s time. Now, to inform people after I’ve waited absurdly long to finalize things and hope more than two people show up.

(Psst Dave, you have to come because I have a birthday present to give you.)
(Psst Chris, that goes for you too.)

Two years ago, Ning bought me a gorgeous journal for my birthday. It’s so beautiful that it’s taken me this long to write something in it; I’ve always felt unworthy.

On Friday, I came to Toronto with Ning and wrote my first entry in a Second Cup while he worked.

So, I saw Snakes on a Plane last night with Ning and five other Asian boys (his friends from university). As expected, it was stupid enough to be quite entertaining. What I didn’t expect was for it to be so graphic and disgusting at times. The camera focused on a busty blonde’s bouncing nipple for about a minute before a snake came and bit it. And do I really need to see a reptile crawl through someone’s eye and out their mouth? Unrealistic and gross.

But it was an amusing way to spend two hours. The theatre audience was small, but excited, and fun without being rude. We had a good time.

After two years of suffering with them, I got my braces removed today. It was a rather unpleasant and slightly painful experience, but nowhere near as bad as getting them on. And they gave me a gift certificate for a free photo, how sweet.

They took impressions for my retainer, which I’ll get next week, and I didn’t gag too much, so! I am happy.

Been reading my e.e. cummings like a good writer.

i am
an intruder in your heart,
but you graciously permit
my residence in
a small clean corner.
my own place.

You have my thanks, always.

meek eyes that can’t hold yours
find instead wondrous
patterns in the floor
tiles and wallpaper;
no sharing, i’m
just grateful
that i
exist
just enough to notice myself.

I have a bit of a habit of living in the past. I’ll constantly relive memories, reread old diary entries and blog posts and look up things in chat logs. I think about friends I haven’t talked to in ten years. (Holy socks, I can say that? I’m old.)

I was curious whether I’d started this blog before or after I started dating Ning, so I went back to the very first entry to see. (Answer: just after.) Then of course I got distracted…

Fast forward an hour. I did a very bad thing after I stopped writing that last paragraph. I searched for Ran’s livejournal, and found it. Again.

Never mind that she hasn’t updated since May. Why I can’t I just let all this go?

I know why. It’s because I will always measure myself against her, and the ideal her Ning built in his head years ago. The one he vowed to love forever. Ning is a constant reminder of her, and what I wanted to be. I was nearly as in love with her as she was. She was my best friend, my favourite person, and I worshipped her.

Now, rereading her personal thoughts, I see once again the human I lost sight of when she turned against me and I, slowly, against her. And I miss her, and I hate myself for that.

I am sick. This has to stop.

Should I talk to her?

I don’t trust myself.

Someone please make me stop doing this.

This is drivel.

This “biography” barely even makes sense. It’s inconsistent, unoriginal, and entirely uninspiring. I suppose that makes sense from someone who cheerfully says she wrote it drunk. Oh, but scroll down to the comments, and it’s a masterpiece.

I’ve been waiting since mid-June for the article I wrote in co-op to get published, and I finally got an answer from my supervisor today — she hopes to run it in a couple of weeks. As I’d requested, she emailed me a plain text version of it so that I have a final copy for my own uses. Technically, I’m not supposed to share the draft with anyone outside the Spectator before it’s published, but at this point, I doubt that’s going to happen — and I’m no longer an employee there anyway. So here is my article on online identity. Special thanks to contributers Ren and Khuffie, and to Dave for pointing me toward Professor Rockwell!

Online Identity: Growing Up in Cyberspace

I log in as the administrator of my weblog — a kind of online journal — and begin typing a post that the miracle of the internet will allow anyone to read. In my blog, I am Kat — a nickname taken from my middle name. Kat seems to me like a friend I am continually getting to know. Sometimes I’m surprised by what she announces she believes. She is careful with what she writes — in the past, disclosure of overly personal information has made some of her friends uncomfortable. She does not write whatever she wants; she writes, to an extent, what she believes people will want to read. She is honest, but she knows her audience influences what she decides to say and how she presents herself. Kat keeps herself quite separate from Sarah, and my legal surname is intentionally absent from my blog. This prevents family, certain acquaintances, and prospective employers from googling my name and discovering my personal thoughts.

Popular blogger Rebecca Blood wrote in her essay on weblogs: “Shortly after I began producing Rebecca’s Pocket I noticed two side effects I had not expected. First, I discovered my own interests… More importantly, I began to value more highly my own point of view. In composing my link text every day I carefully considered my own opinions and ideas, and I began to feel that my perspective was unique and important.â€?

Blogs are just one facet of the internet that allow the user to explore their identity. Other areas include games, chat rooms, and forums. Online, people can experiment with different aspects of their personality, interests, and abilities in a more anonymous space than the “real world.� Blood describes how blogs affect the writer’s sense of self:

“The blogger, by virtue of simply writing down whatever is on his mind, will be confronted with his own thoughts and opinions… Being met with friendly voices, he may gain more confidence in his view of the world.”

I’ve found that blogging is quite different from keeping a private journal. It presses me to pay more attention to what I write, to reach for a higher standard of quality than private writing encourages. I avoid recording mundane events and highly personal information because they provide only boredom or embarrassment. Many post drafts have been abandoned after a mental check of “Will someone want to read this?” My blog is also a place for experimentation. I’ve never been an especially funny person, but I feel a compulsion to make attempts at humour because if I fail, no one will much care, but if I learn to succeed, my writing will be all the more engaging.

The Blog Herald estimates the number of blogs out there to be near 35 million worldwide. Many of those are diary-style sites belonging to youth such as myself. The online encyclopedia Wikipedia describes the appeal of blogs to young adults: “Online diaries are part of the daily lives of many teenagers and college students. Friends use blogs to communicate with each other, keeping each other up-to-date with events and thoughts in a non-intrusive manner. The appeal of this form of communication is that the recipient can read whenever it is convenient, and the writer does not need to remember who still needs to be updated with certain pieces of information - it is there, waiting, for whenever people wish to read it.”

In 2005, the Children’s Digital Media Center at Georgetown University conducted a study of gender, identity and language use in teenage blogs. They found that blogs “provide a space for self-expression” and are “an extension of the real world, rather than a place where people like to pretend.” Adolescents use language to create an anchor and a consistent public face when developing identity, and they “seek a continuity of representations of who they are, as well as a confirmation of those representations by their peers.” The study also found surprising results concerning gendered behaviour — a notable lack of difference between blogs created by young males and females. “Perhaps the technical ease of use of blogs levels the differences between males and females, or perhaps this generation of Internet users is becoming more androgynous in its online communication and interaction.”

When I first met “Ren” in an online gaming forum, a few key points, like her assertive way of writing and her proficiency in the male-dominated world of computer games, led me to assume that she was, in fact, male. Noticing this, she decided to conduct an experiment of gender identity over the internet. She continued with the charade for months, never stooping to deception, just continuing to be herself without mentioning gender. When she finally tired of dancing around pronouns and revealed the truth of her “experiment” to me, I was shocked. Female Ren seemed like a different person to me — even though her behaviour remained exactly the same, my perceptions of her had changed completely.

This would be in keeping with the gender trends Georgetown’s study noticed: females are using the active, resolute language patterns that have traditionally been favoured by males. “One possible implication is that the language and the social interactions on the Internet are changing, perhaps because the participants are changing. That is, the latest wave of teenage females, at least female bloggers, may have different gender roles from those of earlier generations… Alternately, females who choose to create blogs may be less traditional in their gender roles than the general population.”

Geoffrey Rockwell, Associate Professor of Humanities Computing and Multimedia at McMaster University, says of blogs that “in the act of writing, you externalize something, and when you’re reading it later it allows you to think about yourself.” The choice about what to blog, he says, reveals one’s public identity. He blogs his research notes. “Blogs are unquestionably a way of creating my identity — my blog is a way of engaging the community that matters to me.”

Online identity isn’t confined to blogs. Computer games, especially online RPGs (role-playing games), provide opportunities for teens to develop identity in a more interactive, but narrower, space. “There’s more capacity to experiment, but there’s something unreal about these experiments,” Rockwell says. He does recognize the skills youth can build through games, namely problem-solving and multitasking. “There’s a lot more multitasking among youth; it’s a much noisier world.” Rockwell notes that as the primary media we’re exposed to changes, so does the way we develop identity.

Online computer games typically allow the player to customize their character’s appearance and to choose which gender they want to play as. “Gender-bending” is not uncommon. An extensive, ongoing study by Nicholas Yee on the psychology of online RPGs suggested that since social gender boundaries are more stringent in real-life for men, men are more likely to explore gender roles in an anonymous space by choosing to play a female character. Other reasons include the special treatment female gamers can receive, and the ability to dominate and eroticize their avatar when they watch her move. Females, on the other hand, will often use male characters for protection and neutrality in a gender-biased environment.

Adolescents are especially affected by perception and creation of identity. Developmental psychologist Erik Erikson believed identity is the main developmental task of adolescence. One of the shifts to adulthood, Rockwell says, is to define your identity not by what you consume, but by what you make. And the internet is ripe with opportunities for creation: he describes how two teens can use a computer game’s engine to create mini movies. “Wikis,” which he calls “places for collaborative making,” are web pages that can be easily edited by any user. Programs like Garageband and Acid offer novice musicians a simple interface with which to write their own music — a critical part of every teen’s life. As Rockwell puts it, “Teens define themselves by the music they listen to, and now they have this extraordinary capacity to choose.”

The internet, he says, is like a library you can get things from as well as put things into and help catalogue them. He notes that when he was young, he could “micromanage [his] personality around books,” while today’s adolescents can do the same with music. “My kids have access to musical information comparable to a library,” he says.

Chat rooms offer yet another opportunity for identity exploration, but the trend among adolescents seems to be toward presenting their real-life identity online rather than playing pretend. A recent study of teenage chat rooms by the American Psychological Association found that people there are likely to give away personally identifiable information. One way to do so is through the popular “a/s/l” chat code (a request for another participant to reveal their age, sex, and location). Subjects of conversation in teenage chat rooms include sexuality, appearance, and the self — all important aspects of identity construction. As well, teenagers create sexualized nicknames with which to communicate, which the study calls “an adaptive substitute for dressing in a sexy manner or wearing makeup in the real world.”

Nicknames and pseudonyms are rampant on the world wide web. Ahmed “Khuffie” El-Khuffash, owner of www.khuffie.com and webmaster of a popular videogame fansite, thinks a pseudonym “makes it easy for someone to remain anonymous unless they wish to be known. Most of the time, especially for teenage bloggers, it’s a way to express their real identity while keeping it hidden from those they don’t want to know about it… you always show a different side to your parents than what you show to your friends.” Frequently, especially with teenagers, behaviour online is just a variation of real-world dynamics.

On the subject of shyness, El-Khuffash explains why he is more comfortable meeting people online than in person: “I think it’s easier to be true to myself and show who I really am when chatting to people online, which makes it easier in getting to know someone. I tend to be quieter and more reserved in person because I constantly try to think of what I should say next, how I should say it, how I should stand, how I should look at the person, what I should ask… it’s far easier when you have a chance to think before you type.” Face-to-face interactions such as eye contact can be intimidating, he says.

An article by Tom R. Tyler of New York University measuring the social impact of the internet stated that rather than turning to the internet as a way of hiding from real life, socially anxious people use the internet to lessen the anxiety associated with initial meetings. Later, they bring those relationships into the real world, proving that the internet can be a very real force in an individual’s social life and thus in society.

El-Khuffash notes how simple it is to find people with common interests online, giving strangers something to talk about. Rockwell points out that the internet encourages “ghettoization,” segregation by interest. “Instead of being segregated by distance, we’re now segregated by interests, hobbies, and passions.”

Tyler’s article also studied online identity exploration: “When trying out new identities people initially express those identities over the more anonymous Internet and then embrace them and bring them into their real world by telling their friends about them.”

There can be complications when online and real-life identities collide. Heather “Dooce” Armstrong was fired from her job because of what she wrote in her blog. What she never expected was that the same blog would now bring in enough money to support her family. She calls it her “dream job.â€?

As for me, I’ll continue to keep my online and “real” lives separate. Only a select few friends know that Sarah P and Katherine Kelly are the same person. Sarah knows she completely lacks artistic talent; Kat dabbles in art on a large art-sharing website. Sarah keeps her poetry private; Kat posts it on several different writing sites and on her blog. But although Kat gives me an opportunity to be bolder in the safe anonymity of the internet, we are essentially the same.

SIDEBAR - Stats:
(from a March 2006 Spec article) based on results of a 2005 Media Awareness Network report on Canadian children and teens regarding Internet use:
- 94 per cent of teens have Internet access
- by Grade 11, 51 per cent have their own Internet-connected computer
- by Grade 8 more than 75 per cent download and listen to music online.
- 61 per cent of 13- to 17-year-olds have a personal profile on a site such as MySpace, Friendster, or Xanga

BOX - Blogs to check out:
www.rebeccablood.net
www.dooce.com
http://strange.mcmaster.ca/%7Egrockwel/weblog/notes (Geoffrey Rockwell’s research notes)

I hear all kinds of things about how kids act when their parents get a divorce. They blame themselves, they hate their parents for not staying together, they learn not to trust people, etc. All I can say is, it’s about time. One of my earliest memories, possibly my first, is of pressing my ear to the floor listening to them argue. When I was really little, I worried they’d get a divorce. Then as I grew up, I advised and pestered them to split up. Their arguments and lack of ability to civilly, constructively communicate have been one of the few unchanging norms in my life.

I resent them for staying together as long as they have. Any parents who think they should stay together “for the children” are deluding themselves. Children aren’t stupid or blind, even when they’re young. Yes, they want to have a happy mommy and daddy who love them and each other forever. What they don’t want is a miserable couple whose constant bickering is at first frightening, but gradually becomes extremely irritating. Although my parents have never bothered to pretend things were alright between them, kids see through parents who do — even if it takes them years to realize it, they’ll know when they get older.

But my parents’ biggest reason for not divorcing has been religion. The bible disapproves of divorce, so it simply wasn’t an option. However, they’ve taken turns moving out for various periods of time. My father lived with his parents for over a year. (Was it two years? I don’t remember.) They’ve also stayed at hotels for weeks at a time, racking up bills we don’t have the money for. Recently, they declared themselves legally separated, despite still living together. This has made an enormous mess of things for their taxes and any paperwork they or I need to fill out. Finally, after 23 years of marriage, my father is buying his own house. (I could create a much longer rant about how I think the way they’re dividing up their finances and assets is completely wrong, but I won’t.)

Years ago, I asked my mother if she would choose to marry my father again, knowing what she knows now (I let her figure out what that means). She didn’t have to think long before saying no. So why stay married now, I asked her? She didn’t have an answer. I think that was my first serious indication that it was only a matter of time. And I was glad.

Last night Ning and I took our level 23s (my undead priest and his troll warrior) to Hillsbrad to do some quests. The first time we got ganked, it was by a 31, and after we resurrected, we teamed up to kill him and corpse camped several times for good measure before a ?? Alliance happened by and we ran away.

Things went downhill from there. We went to the peasant-infested farms to collect skulls, and that was hard enough without the gankers killing us every few minutes. Finally, after much bitching on my part, Ning got on his 60 undead priest and patrolled the area, repeatedly killing everyone who ganked me. It was totally badass. He was my personal bodyguard and bounty hunter until I happily collected all my 30 skulls and finished a few more quests in that chain.

Little looks more impressive than a high-level character killing things in your low level zone. Enemies pretty much dropped at his feet on sight. And the best part? Because we were partied together, I gained my first 153 honour from his vengeful assassinations. Exciting!

My poor blog is more neglected than ever. Thanks to the wonder that is Spam Karma, there aren’t even any spam comments to keep it company. No insurance deals, no generic Viagara, not even a poker site to sneak its way in and warm the lonely nights.

So what has Kat been up to lately? Well, this past Sunday to Friday was the longest I’ve lived in my own house in some time. I typically go to Ning’s every weekend from Friday night to Monday morning, when we go our separate ways at the train station — he to work, and I back home. Before the leadership conference, he gave me an early birthday present: I accompanied him to Toronto and he gave me money to shop while he worked. We met up for lunch and stayed for dinner afterward.

In short, I’ve been spending as little time at home as possible, and I like it that way.

This weekend, Ning had some family friends and old high school friends over to see his new house (renovated and all — and I helped!). I was a little apprehensive, because I get nervous around people I sort of know — strangers and friends I’m okay with, but acquaintances and friends of friends make me worry, especially if I expect to see them again. Also, I was the only white, non-Chinese-speaking person there. I clung a bit to Andrew, a mutual friend of Ning’s and mine, and got him to translate for me. I intend to recruit Andrew to teach me Chinese in coming years since Ning refuses.

But it was fun. Highlights of the night included relaxing in the hot tub with Ning and others, hearing Ning’s father tell Ning to behave there (his dad is so quiet and rarely speaks up, so it was funny), seeing Ning drink (and beer, no less), discovering that I like Bailey’s, squishing about nine of us into the sauna, watching Ning lose royally at poker so that he could spend time with me (I don’t play), getting told I’m like part of his family (squee!) and hearing that his friends’ parents like me.

That last part was the most daunting of the night: at one point, Ning took my hand and started leading me up the stairs, saying that some of the parents wanted to meet me. Three smiling Chinese mothers stood at the top, and when I arrived, Ning promptly left me alone with them. Without a clue as to how much English these women spoke, I chatted with them for a few minutes about school and such before excusing myself and running back to Ning. Apparently I made a good impression, as Ning’s mother told him later that night.

It always comes as an immense relief to hear that people like me. I know I worry too much about this, even beyond just wanting Ning’s family to approve of me. Ever since late high school, when my best friend decided I no longer cut it, I’ve judged myself based on other people’s opinions of me. The thing about trying hard to please people is that if you do it right — don’t pretend to be someone else, don’t go overboard, and never come off as simpering or desperate, just as a genuinely good person — it works, and then you can’t stop. I need everyone to like me, which makes me feel pathetic, which leads me to be surprised and overwhelmingly glad every time I hear that someone does like me.

Anyway, enough of that nonsense. That’s just who I am, and I don’t mind it much. I think it’s far more desirable to be self-aware and dislike yourself than to be one of those people about whom other people whisper, “Can she not see/hear/smell herself? How does she stand it?” It goes in the same category as knowing how little you really know; Socrates had it right that the wisest man thinks himself a fool. The true fool is the one who thinks himself wise.

At last, I won’t be lying anymore when I tell people I’m 18!

I could make a list of all the things I’m legally allowed to do now, but there’s not a lot that I can realistically run out and do day-of other than buy porn and lottery tickets (read: I can’t drink yet) so I won’t bother. No thanks to strip clubs, everyone knows those are for boys — there’s just something inherently weird about male strippers.

Now off to shower since I was lazy and slept in. I’ll be updating with an actual post later, promise.

Full of Turkish delight!

Last night, after coming home exhausted from a fantastic weekend-long leadership conference at Laurier, I finally gave in and made a character on Ning’s server. He convinced me to try something new besides warlock, so I took his advice and now a scared-looking undead priest named Seryn is running around Aegwynn. (I doubt anyone will recognize that as my GW elementalist’s name, but I’m all for continuity.) After playing a while today, I’m up to level 12 and have only been ganked once. I have yet to venture into contested territory, so I’m having fun.

Something tells me I should be writing more about what I did on the weekend than my WoW exploits, so here goes. From Friday to Sunday I attended LEAP, a conference for about 100 first-year students. As one girl put it, everyone was “ridiculously friendly.” With the exception of maybe three first impressions, it was unbelievable how nice everyone was. I made a bunch of friends, including one non-athletic girl who shares my name and September residence. Apparently just about everyone else in the building is into sports, so we were grateful to find each other.

We played all kinds of games, listened to speakers, learned campus cheers, and attended small-group sessions where we peppered our leaders with questions about university life — the kind of stuff they don’t publish on WLU’s website. Like, is buying a mini-fridge worth it, and what will really happen if you come home drunk, and are you sure a single-sex residence won’t suck? (I’m quite happy with mine, but it’s a source of concern for some.) But the best part was just meeting like-minded students, the smartest and most involved kids from Canada’s schools, and discovering how easy it is to make friends when we’re all in the same boat. It’s one thing to hear it from upper-year students, but it’s another thing to experience striking up a conversation in a room full of strangers and starting a friendship that could last for years.

It surprises me how quickly I became used to communicating with Ning via MSN while we’re less than 10 feet apart. Somehow it’s just easier to type to each other and humbly request attention while we’re both occupied with our computers — currently, he’s playing WoW and I’m solving Sudokus. Aside from the obvious benefit of keeping our dialogue from his younger brother, the small blinking rectangle is inobtrusive in a way we sometimes wish to be in each others’ lives.

/artistic bs

So, I’ve extended my usual weekend stay at Ning’s house to Monday because it’s a civic holiday here in Canada. When I woke him up at 11, he promptly started playing WoW and claimed to have not yet woken up.

He’s still going. I’m bored.

1) Back at you: what was your first impression of me?
2) Do you like Ning? ^^ (Not high-school like like -_-)
3) What’s your favourite book?
4) If you could change anything about yourself, what would it be?
5) Would you ever sell out and produce artistic drivel if you could live comfortably on the salary?

Interviewed by teh Ren.

1) What was your first impression of me? (waaaay back-in-the-day on the Ubi boards)
Funny, smart, cynical, but you complained about the right things so you were cool in my books. :D And I remember being proud that I knew someone who was a good artist. Can I rebound this question back to you? :3

2) Would you want to write for the rest of your life if money was no object?
HELL YES. (And play videogames.) I would love to be able to just stop and write whenever the fancy takes me.

3) Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
Either a) married and writing while my husband works… teehee,
b) married and on my way to a Masters or PhD in English, or
c) married and working, probably either teaching (preferably university) or working in an office somewhere.

4) What’s your favorite song of the moment? (..this moment, the next moment, pick a moment)
Run by Snow Patrol. It’s been a semi-favourite for a while now, and I just listened to it today for the first time in far too long. So nice. <3 (Psst, they were playing Lifehouse at the restaurant today and it reminded me, I just found out Ning likes Lifehouse too!)

5) What are you gonna name your character and town when you get Animal Crossing for your birthday? :D
Probably something with Ryn in it… I get to name my town? Ummm all I can think of at the moment is Kissington. Damn 10th Kingdom >_> Maybe I’ll name it Persia. Or Rivendell. Or Katland. That last one sounds appropriate.

First time I’ve used emoticons in my blog in many, many months.

While waiting for a friend to arrive today, I played a few minutes of Guild Wars. My first post-WoW reaction to the game was to gawk at the screen and wonder where everything was. No text, no character pictures, only eight puny spell buttons? I had to squint to see the experience bar. Where was everything? What was there to do?

Aesthetics aside, after only the briefest of glances at my skill set, I ambled outside on my warrior to try to fight. I died. All those buttons that first overwhelmed me in WoW now seem perfectly sensible — it’s tough getting used to only having eight skills on hand. I needed to reskill for soloing in order to fight anything, but I didn’t feel like slogging through my foggy memories to remember what skills and skill points to use, so I left it.

I’ve noticed that WoW is very explicit in letting you know what enemies you’ll be able to fight with precisely what degree of difficulty. This has become more convenient than limiting, like I had originally feared, so going back to GW feels like more of a best guess at what I can safely attack. I think this is due to the impermanent nature of skilling and reskilling in GW, rather than WoW’s more difficult to change talent point system, as well as the novelty of choosing two “professions” (warrior/monk, elementalist/monk, etc).

Guild Wars got a lot of things right, but overall it’s tiny compared to WoW or other MMOs, which gives one the impression that it’s for more casual gamers. Money is fairly quickly gotten. Long treks to destinations are a thing of the past thanks to map teleportation. You’ll be at the highest level sooner than you can click-to-run. All in all, it’s fun, and very pretty, but not extraordinary.