May 31, 2013

  • Xanga Days

    Well now this could be the last of all the rides we take
    So hold on tight and don't look back
    We don't care about the message or the rules they make
    We'll find you when the sun goes black

    With the recent announcement of the possibility of Xanga going down, Xangans all over — and contrary to some people's belief, there are more than five of us — are posting up their farewell/Xanga experience blogs. This will be no different. When I read about the potential and totally possible fall of this beloved website, I instantly went into panic mode. The idea of readjusting everything just freaked me out so much. At the same time, I wasn't surprised that this came about. Things have been running away from me one after the other since 2013 started. 

    I've been a user since I was twelve. Yeah, I was one of those irritating "hai gaize i just got off 4rm sk00l" kids — sue me. That's eight years on Xanga in general and six and a half on this user alone (I finally settled on one blog). And since I've had this one particular website, it has been my best friend. It sounds really sad, sure. But Xanga holds so many secrets and stories from my past and my present and then some. This blog has seen me grow and change in ways that I never thought would be possible. And it rips me right open to think that I won't be able to browse through my archive like I love to on days when it's rainy and sick to laugh at all the silly things I used to say. 

    For as long as I have been able to, majority of my thoughts — happy or sad — have been documented in writing and Xanga soon became my primary vessel of doing so. Whenever I had something to say about myself, the world, life or that random guy who slept at one of the bus stops in my neighborhood I wrote. When my first boyfriend broke my itty bitty heart, I wrote. When my family pissed me off, I wrote. When I realized how much my old friends hadn't grown up, I wrote. When I realized that I was in an abusive relationship, I wrote. When I wanted to gloat about how my team won the superbowl, I wrote. When I graduated, I wrote. When I fell in love with that kid I used to bump into at the mall, I wrote. When I figured out what path I wanted to go down career-wise, I wrote. When I found God, I wrote. And when I figured out that I still hadn't figured anything out yet, I wrote. And I wrote it all here. 

    This blog tells you all about my first love to my most recent. It tells you that my ultimate goal was to have a page on Wikipedia and now it's to get everyone I care about the most to love themselves and the world and be completely and irrevocably happy with their lives. It tells you all about the things that have changed and even the things that didn't. It tells you of the mistakes I've made and the number of times I had to make them in order for me to learn from them. All the while, it helped me to develop my style as a blogger and a writer and helped me to maintain what sanity I had left. This blog is the story of the last almost seven years of my life and the fact that I may just have to see it go stings a lot.

    And even though I was still getting that whole "YOU'RE STILL ON XANGA?!" reaction, its recent decrease in popularity helped me to regain my confidence in my blogging knowing that my audience was small. [Of course, recently my popularity has grown but I quite enjoy it] Plus, I am very loyal and Xanga was very familiar and so community based without the stupidity of the outside internet world getting in...at least most of it. 

    So what do I do now? Now, I continue to blog until the day the Xanga Team announces its fate. Meanwhile, I'll continue to make the proper plans to choosing and transferring to another blogging website. If and when the day comes, my entire archive will be downloaded and in the near future will be printed and binded into the book that I always planned to create since 2008. I'll title it "The Xanga Days" and I'll keep it with the rest of my journals. 

    In any case, if you're curious what happens to me should Xanga shut down, shoot me an e-mail at thejellogirl@gmail.com and I'll mail you my situation if it happens. 

    All my love to my fellow Xangans and the Xanga Team for choosing us and not them (as in "the man"),

    -- ZelleZ

    Cause you only live forever in the lights you make
    When we were young we used to say
    That you only hear the music when your heart begins to break
    Now we are the kids from yesterday