I've had this blog for 8 years. It morphed from a silly personal college group to public fandom, and then disappeared. Over that time it garnered 13,500 site visits from over 80 countries, and nearly 33,000 total page views. Unfortunately, I never paid for premium on my site meter, so the statistics and details disappeared during the year I had this blog locked down and the site meter went dormant. I know, right? It's all gone.
Long before I was Janika Banks in the Lexx fandom, I was Yablo, moderating onelist groups in the Sliders and Xena fandoms. Since 1994 I've owned over 40 websites, writing my own code and hosting all of them on my own dime. A lot of people from a lot of places have contacted me, including authors, publicists, actors, artists, and musicians. Fans have included all ages from all walks of life, very rich and very poor, some handicapped or terminally or mentally ill, all beautiful to me.
I've also met interesting people in some of my jobs, including very successful software developers, millionaires, performers, musicians, writers, athletes, all kinds of world travelers and business owners. I bought my second computer from Doug Pitt at Service World. Yes, Brad's brother. I drive by Brad Pitt's old high school at least once a week. I went to the same college as John Goodman and Kathleen Turner. Part of Larva (renamed MorphMan) was filmed in the courthouse of the town where I went to high school. The Blues Brothers featuring Dan Aykroyd performed in a field at a jeep rally 5 miles from my house. Yakov Smirnoff sat only a table away from my group at a Chuck E. Cheese. I could keep going.
I mention this stuff because I never really have before. A lot of people seem to know me in one way or another, not all by the same name. Some people have no idea who I am online, others have no idea who I am in real life. I so rarely mix my identities, have never before integrated my entire life as an aggregate.
I have fairly severe social anxiety. This is difficult for some people to understand since I have absolutely no fear of public speaking. Anyone who knows me will confirm that I don't know when to shut up. My problem is interaction on a personal level, because I have Asperger's Syndrome. I'm very good with the public at large, going so far as to win customer service awards. But I'm sure my internet friends have found me to be a confusing person. Even when the interaction is 100% positive, I'm easily overwhelmed by even a small volume of personal contact and go into shutdown mode, a very typical Asperger trait.
Like Burt on Soap, I need to be invisible. I need my comfort zone. That kinda blew up, I moved to another planet, my stuff disappeared, and Janika Banks dissolved into the mist, as did Yablo before that.
Until Scott and I were run completely off the highway last month avoiding a late night head on collision at 65 mph +(plus) the other car's speed coming the other way (this is where your middle school math skills come in handy, remember those word problems?) and miraculously we all lived, literally missing each other by an inch in the dark at high speed. Yeah, scary. The next day we could see that if we'd gone off the road in any other place a mile either way, we'd have been killed. We were on the only short strip of flat grass between deep ditches, steep drops, jagged flint outcrops, and big trees. It still feels really weird that we're alive, because during that incident with no time to think, we both assumed we were dead. Neither car rolled or wrecked, we both self corrected right back onto the highway, and I'm assuming the other driver went home pretty shook up. All I can figure is that person was coming home from a late shift at work and was asleep with their eyes open, using the headlights of oncoming cars to gauge their position, then automatically self correcting toward our headlights thinking that the further to their left we move, the more off the road to the right they were going. That driver self corrected four times straight for us and didn't jolt awake enough to self correct back until they saw our headlights tilt slightly going off the road, just in the very nick of time, which means their eyes were open and they were sober enough to make a vital hasty decision. We nearly got plowed. That was going to be a really nasty wreck.
My psychologist was very surprised when I told him I'm going public again. He's been working with me for 5 1/2 years on social and communication skills. My lawyer says my IQ is through the roof, but the psychologist assessed my GAF at a 60 on a day I thought was going pretty good. I'm the textbook nerdy geek with lower than average social skills. Scott calls me Sheldon when I get real bad, so imagine what I'm like to live with. I not only have a spot on the couch, but one friend went so far as to politely point out that I nest. He also said that I am to be taken with a tub of salt.
I have had more friends than just about anyone I know, friends who have literally left their homes and traveled a thousand miles just to come see me, but I don't know what to do with that. Alas, it has taken me so many years to understand and appreciate the portent behind that kind of behavior. I'm sorry it has taken so long, but given the Asperger's, I'm probably lucky I've learned it at all. Anyway, really long story dramatically shortened, ok, I confess I set those bombs under all those bridges. But I have a psychologist now. I've been practicing, like this: *ahem* "I'm sorry I ate your pets and used their skins for pillow cases. I hope you can forgive the misunderstandings and gloss over the awkwardness this has created."
And if not, I'll still leave comments open anyway. It's all good in a psychologist's office.
To all my friends who understood my encryptions and accepted who I am: Hello. I'm back.
