| Hey there. I don't have a lot of time right now since I have to get going to go to work in 15 mins, but I figured I'd start this thing anyway, for all the hundreds of people going to read it!
Like my profile says, my name is Justin, I'm 22 years old living in Toronto, working a full-time job now and living in a basement rent-out thingy. I'll talk more about that later.
My online life is a long time in the making. By no means did it start with FFXI. Really, I think the first time I went on a "chat room" was about 10 years ago or more, when my mom decided to test out a modem in our family computer. We got one of those '40 hours FREE!' kits from AoL in the mail, so we decided to try that out. I signed on, and immediately headed over the chat rooms to see what was up. I still remember some of conversations and "roleplays" I had in the regular and RP channels. Good memories. Well, me and my two brothers really loved that AoL thing, so we ended up going way over the 40 hours, and costing my gramma who had sported the credit card number about $700 worth of internet charges in two months. Ouch. Needless to say we didn't get the internet again for a while.
Later, I found mIRC. I joined a random server and searched for the roleplay channels, then picked one. The rest, as they say, is history. That was about 7 or 8 years ago, and I still roleplay with these people on a daily basis. Obviously some of the people have changed, but there are some who haven't. Hi Frank, Barb, Paul, Ben =)
Years later, I became an EQ junky. Played that for the better part of 2 years, if not longer. I was young, and inexperienced, and very volatile. I remember some of the relationships I forged in that game, good and bad. For the most part I don't speak to these people anymore, but recently, someone very prominent in my EQ life at the time has re-contacted me. It's bringing up a lot of mixed feelings and memories, kinda weird. Anyway, that's when I stopped lying about myself and who I was (self-esteem issues) and started being who I wanted to be in myself. That's also where I started the wild "flirting" thing, which I do on FFXI, too. It was an indirect outlet for my sexual desires to find their way out, through harmless, meaningless winks, flirts, and play "rwar"s. Usually, poor, innocent straight guys found themselves on the receiving end. Some of them barely acknowledge it (which is boring), some of them get really nervous (which is extremely amusing), some of them flirt back playfully (which is hillarious) and every once in a blue moon one of them flirts back and means it! And then that spawns whole new conversations, questions, and some other really interesting stuff. Sorry Vento, Kreg, Naikon, Gabriael, etc =) I still love you guys, my flirts are meaningless =D Yes, I am homosexual, but I'm not stupid enough to put any real meaning behind silly little flirts and words of a video game.
I do all this on FFXI because in reality, I'm insanely shy, and I hate confrontation. That's also the reason I'm so confrontational in FFXI, because I can say what I want to whom I want without fear. It's one of my inner demons I have to conquer in real life, but sometimes I can't stand the confrontation and I'd rather not talk about a subject. I still don't know what triggers that feeling inside of me, because I'm still a vocal person outside the game. I also love intrigue. And that's not to say drama necessarily, but the intrigue that is usually buried under it all. Especially online, I'll answer any personal question that is posed to me by someone I trust. That's gotten me in trouble quite a few times, but I still like to talk about that kind of stuff. I have a couple friends in and out of game who find the whole "gay" thing facinating or confusing, and who ask me questions about it. For the most part, I actually enjoy answering these questions.
Wow, well my time's up. I gotta get to work. I guess I'll talk more later, if I find people actually read this =P See ya. |
