On Blogging

This morning, when I woke up...

....well, before I woke up because I hadn't had my coffee yet...

...I turned on my computer while the coffee was brewing and saw a post on my Facebook wall from a long-time friend. Someone I met online back in 1999. He'd written an article about me and published it while I was sleeping last night. I don't really have much to say about it other than it meant the world to me. Even got a little misty eyed (damn, why wasn't my coffee done brewing!). You can read the article here.

Like I said, I'll let the article speak for itself (or for Bryon - thank you my dear friend - I didn't deserve it. Hero or not, I love you.)  But it reminded me again of something from my past. I am a blogger. Or I was. If you read these posts with any regularity, you know I had a blog back in the day. Put it down for a long while. Picked up the habit again once I started this AIDS/LifeCycle journey. And this is the story of my former blog...

Last century (yes, it was 1999 - seriously, that was last century), I was living in Chicago and working a Return-to-Work program at Howard Brown Health Center for people with HIV. During this time, I met some friends who did this crazy thing called "weblogging" (or "journaling" as we called it because "weblogging" was kind of a clunky word. Thankfully some genius shortened it to "blogging" at some point).

Anyway, I was intrigued. Not because I wanted to keep an online journal but because these  guys wrote all their own code & HTML and it seemed like a cool little skill to learn. So I did. I'm kind of like that. Something interests me. I figure it out. And learn to do it.

But after I learned it what could I do with it? Well, the internet was pretty small back then and I didn't have a business or anything. But I figured I could keep an online journal like they were doing. And I could run a webcam from my home like they were doing. But... why? I mean, I'm just me. Slowly it become clear...

I'd spent most of the past decade educating others and bringing awareness to issues around HIV & AIDS. By allowing others a glimpse into my life, they would see that I wasn't much (if any) different than them. That I woke up groggy, drank a lot of coffee, loved dogs, sometimes smiled, sometimes yelled, sometimes vegged, sometimes dreamed. I felt by posting little snippets of my life on the internet, a few people would get a view into the world of HIV - not the sensationalistic stuff that was shown on the news but the day-to-day of an average Joe (or average Jim in my case).

So, with the help of my graphic design friend Marco, that's what I did.

But I had no idea...

No idea that the internet was still so small at the time that people with nothing else to do would visit my little website. That within months I would have over 125,000 visitors to the site per month from more than 80 countries around the world (how the heck was I relevant in Madagascar?!?!?). That people would sit in the chat room on my website and have long conversations with me. That they would watch my puppy grow into a handsome guy and give me advice (and sometimes chastisement) on how best to raise him. That they came back. That they listened.

My website had a blog and some photos and a chat room and links to other blogger's sites. And somehow it grew quickly. What started as a simple online journal suddenly became the place for others to ask questions about HIV. When I first started, I received a few emails a day from site visitors... and early on I made a promise to reply to them all. That ended a few months later when I was receiving hundreds a day. And my Saturdays and Sundays were spent trying to clear out my inbox. The one little black & white webcam I started with, was joined by a top-of-the-line webcam which then got booted by a couple of analog Sony camcorders with digital converters. I had three cameras running in my house, 24 hours a day, seven days a week and people watched some of the most mundane things for minutes - or hours - in hopes of catching something fun, interesting... or even a bit of flesh.

No, it wasn't a sex site. And no I didn't get paid for it. But sometimes I did use flirtation and a little show of the abs to keep people coming back. But my focus was information. And, again, a look into the life of a healthy, optimistic person living with HIV. This is something they weren't getting on their news channels. Or, maybe they were from a small town and had HIV themselves but knew no one else that had it. I became that person they "knew." And hopefully that person that made a dent in the stigma attached to HIV.

And know them I did. There were other webcammers like Tim who I've written about in a previous post. And those who still keep their blogs & cams like Rex from rexsworld.com. Or the sexiest geek I know (and I love me a sexy geek), the infamous Mark Allen from markallencam.com. There were others who blogged & cammed but don't any longer - like Christoph from Paris or Rage from Atlanta. We were this odd community. Trailblazers? That sounds weird to me because, at the time, there were about 50,000 of us worldwide. Compared to the number of blogs out there today though, I suppose we were pioneers in a way. And when we had the chance we met up, hung out, shared tips & advice. And a few I met in person (all the ones I listed). And most I'm still friends with today because, like this journey with AIDS/LifeCycle, we experienced something together. Yes, take note fellow ALCers, you probably won't be rid of me very quickly once we cross that finish line. I like to keep good people nearby, heh!



But I got to know others who didn't blog or cam. Some sent me birthday gifts or flowers on Valentines Day. Joe sent me a bottle of wine and, when I moved to San Francisco, we dated for awhile. Jon and I met when I moved to SF too. I met Christoph when he came to the States for a visit. Tim and I developed a long-lasting friendship. And even just a few months ago I met the sweetest guy Todd, who at one time dropped in on my site on occasion to see what this guy jimagery was up to.

And of course there was Bryon in London. We had a major connection right away and met face-to-face during a trip to the UK soon after our online correspondence started. For a few years we lost touch - like many of us did - until the miracle of Facebook brought us all back together again. With Bryon, I've written articles for his magazine, he wrote that article about me, and we still keep in touch regularly.

Sure, I only have contact - and much of it limited - with a few of those 125,000 people who once visited my site. But, maybe... just maybe... as Bryon wrote in his article, my website made a difference in some of their lives. Whether they were struggling with their sexuality, their HIV status, or with raising a puppy (and, let me tell you, those first years with J.D. were a struggle!), I hope I touched a few of their lives in some way. But mostly, I hope I saved one or two lives. Hope they received information they weren't getting from anywhere else. Or began to feel more comfortable knowing that somewhere out there another guy was living with HIV openly.

Most of all, I just hope that for one moment they understood the world is a very small place, that life is special and that, no matter what, we're all in this together.

My website at www.jimagery.com has been down for a decade now (but I still own the URL, believe it or not). But some crazy web guru started archiving websites a long, long time ago so if you want a little glimpse into a me who was a dozen years younger and a dozen years less wise, you can check it out on the web archive at web.archive.org

I didn't ask for this life. I just ran with it. Made lemonade out of lemons? Maybe. Really all I did was the best I could do with the tools & knowledge I had. That's all any of us can do, right? So I continue to strive for that. I hope you do too.