The Quixotic Jedi

fireland:

Aw look at that logo. Just adorbs. Thanks, Photoshop 3.

I started Fireland fifteen years ago this week. I was 22, living in San Francisco with a girl I wanted to break up with, working a temp job where I did 10-key data entry all day. A guy who was in the Red House Painters worked there, too.

The site was a bunch of random pieces of writing. Fiction masquerading as non-fiction and vice versa, etc. Basically the same shit I’m doing today.

There have been many times when I’ve regretted investing so much time and energy in the internet. When I was embarrassed by the whole thing. But it occurred to me that just about every good thing I have in my life today has stemmed, directly or indirectly, from that site.

Paul Ford wrote this in 2003, and I didn’t agree with it then but I do now:

I do not apologize for loving the web more than print. I do not apologize for wanting to write. I do not apologize for giving away my work. I do not apologize for taking my work seriously. The web is my medium of choice, not a medium of last resort.