I sent this letter to the NaNoWriMo board on 6 December 2023.
If you have no idea what’s going on, I recommend reading this Google doc that has been floating around, which will give you a high level summary of the past year’s events in the NaNoWriMo organization.
Now, on to the letter.
October 12, 2002. Dialup internet was the norm where I lived, and I shared that precious internet time with my brother. One of us regularly stayed at our grandparents’ house down the street so we could both be on the internet at the same time. What a world that was.
This particular day was a Saturday. I had spent the rest of the day at the library and hanging out with my church youth group, playing HORSE and Duck Hunt. I was tired of the person I was, or rather, I was still in that long and arduous process of discovering myself.
I got home from church, hopped online, and started reading some Diaryland blogs. And there it was: someone mentioned writing a novel in a month. Next month, in fact. I could do that! Right?
I clicked that link and signed up immediately, sealing my fate as the name you’re reading now. If I could finish writing a book, I reasoned, I could call myself a real writer.
The Silph Road, the original home of digging into game mechanics and grassroots Pokemon Go PVP tournaments, announced back in May that they were shutting down operations entirely in August. Some parts of the Silph network were already down when it was announced. I’ve made so many friends through Silph tournaments, both online and in person, that it’s hard to dismiss Silph and PVP as a small part of my life.
I’ve competed in every single Silph meta. When the pandemic started, Pokemon Go lifted the requirement to be ultra friends in order to battle remotely, so I started doing more remote tournaments.
Something weird happened. I started getting better.
The last time I visited New York City was in 2009. I was a fresh-faced new graduate interviewing for a job that turned out to be a scam during the worst of the Great Recession. Smartphones weren’t mainstream yet. I was comparing hot dog and dollar slice stands for the one that was fifty cents cheaper. I pinched every penny during this short trip and still worried about going broke because I had no income for the foreseeable future.
Fourteen years later, everything has changed. The student loans that got me through college are gone. I finally have a stable job where the primary dislikes fall under corporate crap I won’t escape by working elsewhere. I own a freaking home. (This last one boggles my mind sometimes, but I come back to reality whenever I hear a weird and potentially expensive noise.) And I returned to the city this summer, not for a job prospect but for vacation and Go Fest.
Seeing a place through new eyes is its own experience, especially when more money can go toward it.
Spring 2009. I’ve seen LiveJournal posts from friends full of updates from a site called Twitter.com. This has been going on for about a year, short micro-updates with things like “Bananas foster day in the dining hall” and “Hour 3 of all-nighter. Two pages in. Not sure what I’m doing.” The inanity of the updates made me dismiss the site as stupid. Why would you want to tweet (another silly term, I thought) something in 140 characters? It could be its own LJ post.
May 2009. I’m experiencing those blissful days between turning in my last final exam and graduating into the worst job market with no idea what kind of jobs to apply to, much less what to do with my entire life. I ditch the idea of grad school. I can apply for math Ph.D. programs in the fall if I change my mind.
What better thing to do in a fit of boredom than to sign up for Twitter and figure out what the big deal is?
So I do exactly that, using the same username you know. I have no idea how my life and the world will change in the coming years.