This weekend, I had the horrible experience of being banned from posting to my favorite micro blogging site, Jaiku for two days. While some say this is just a Web 2.0 start up and will float away like many (all) of the rest of them, I beg to differ. I have been on this community for almost two years now and have had shared my life with these people. I have met some in person, who will remain nameless, some who I fell in love with, some who broke my heart, some who have listened to me cry after my heart was broken. I am in the beginning of collaborating with some on writing adventures, and others have bought me a pro Flickr account in an invition to share more of my art than I have before. This is more than just spewing 140 characters out on a page.
In the past six months I have gone sober again and honestly without the support of my fellow Jaiku’ers I would have failed. Even while they jaiku’d drunk, I knew they supported my decision not to. And I if I said I was having a hard time that night, people I never even suspected would pop up and say “you can do this”. That is more than verbal diarrhea on an internet that already has more than enough noise. That is true support. And if and when it goes away these people will still be in my life only in different ways. But it won’t be the same.
