Ruminations of an Old Goat

Way back in 1995, I was working in tech support. If you've never worked tech support before, the job involves taking phone calls from people who made the mistake of buying and attempting to use the software you've been hired to support. Virtually every call begins negatively -- because people rarely call tech support to tell them how well the software is working -- and many times can go downhill from there. Given the negative feelings running around the department, it's not that surprising the book Microserfs by Douglas Coupland was a big hit with us.

"Hey, look!" we'd say. "Those people have it just as bad as we do! That's cool."

Misery definitely loves company.

The thing about Microserfs is that it was one of the few books available which was set in the IT industry. I'm pretty sure I enjoyed at least as much for that as for anything else in the story. That got me to searching for other books with a solid IT setting. In case you didn't know, there weren't that many to be found in 1995. But by a combination of luck of regular searching, I managed to find another one. The book was Headcrash. The author was Bruce Bethke.

I zipped through Headcrash, which turned out to be a hit among the science fiction fans in tech support. Having thoroughly enjoyed Headcrash, I went looking for other books by Bethke. This was before the days of Amazon.com, so my searches met with little success at the time. Eventually, I managed to find a copy of Rebel Moon from Amazon.com. That was five years after I read Headcrash. I still remembered his name and was interested in reading books by him. (Alas, Rebel Moon was lost before I could read it, when we moved to Raleigh a few weeks after it arrived.)

Skip forward to 2005, the year I discovered sfsite.com, a science fiction review web site. One feature maintained on the site was a list of authors' web sites. I think the list is gone now, but four years ago there were plenty of sites listed. I scanned through the list looking for authors whose books I had read. The list was alphabetical, of course, so I can across Bethke fairly quickly. The link took me to brucebethke.com and, from there, to The Ranting Room.

I lurked around The Ranting Room for a couple of years. I read posts from Bruce and was pleasantly surprised to discover someone who shared many of the same opinions I shared. He periodically discussed his son, who seemed to be a year or two older than my son, forging another one-way connection when his experiences with his son turned out to be eerily similar to my experiences with my son. I even tried to follow this Friday Challenge thing Bruce ran each week. As I still wasn't reading the site full time, that proved more difficult that I care to admit these days.

Finally, in late 2007, I got tired of lurking. I'm still not sure why I got tired of it, but I did. On November 16, I made my first post, an entry in the current Friday Challenge. I kept coming back regularly after that, to see how my entry had done. Of course, the first time I entered a Friday Challenge it turned out to be during a busy time for Bruce. When he finally announced a winner three or four weeks later, he had to announce winners for at least two other challenges at the same time. And I won the challenge with my very first entry.

I was tempted to retire from Friday Challenges with an undefeated record. But I had found the whole business, even the waiting, to be rather fun. So I stuck around, mostly lurking but making the occasional comment. I didn't enter another Friday Challenge until the middle of January, 2008. I lost, but I had fun again. I began entering more often. I'd begun making some connections to people on the site, among them Vidad, Al (who started entering shortly after I did) and Passinthrough. I was enjoying myself and starting to feel as if I were part of the community. It was that feeling of community that gave me the courage to post my entry in the "worst job you've ever held" Friday Challenge.

Reading all of the other entries in that challenge was a lot of fun. They were all light, breezy and funny. Then there was my entry. At the time, I was struggling mightily with my foster son. While I didn't really think being a foster father counted as a job, at the time it was the worst situation I'd ever been in. I wrote of my pain at being rejected by a child and sorrow at what the child was doing to my family and me. It wasn't easy to write and I expect it wasn't particularly pleasant to read. I ended up winning that challenge that week, though that wasn't why I had written the entry. I wrote it because I desperately needed to bare my soul to people I felt would be understanding. They were, pouring out support. I was bleeding and the people of the Friday Challenge bandaged my wounds. Of particular solace were messages I exchanged privately with Bruce.

That one event marked a shift in my connection with The Ranting Room. I'd even go as far as to say it marked a shift in my life. I had found the one place online that helped heal me. I know this sounds trite and I don't want to anyone to think I had no support in person. I had plenty of that. But the closer I felt to the people in The Ranting Room, the more I wanted to be involved in it. Writing, even when your subject has nothing to do with your problems, is healing. At the very least, it allows your mind to go somewhere else, far away from your problems, if just for a little while. And all along, I slowly got to know the people who read and commented on my writing.

That is the real benefit I've gotten from The Ranting Room and, now, The Friday Challenge. I've formed truly close friendships with people all over the country; people I wouldn't have met without these two sites. My only regret is that I can't simply call any of you and suggest we meet for dinner. Compared to what I have gained, it's not much of a regret.

I can honestly say my life is much better because of these two sites. It's why I am so dedicated to this site. I want it to be here the next time someone like me stumbles across it, so it can help change their life, too.

Bruce, I know you didn't write Headcrash for me. But 14 years after I read it, I'm going to pretend like you did. Without that novel, I'd never have found The Ranting Room. And without The Ranting Room and The Friday Challenge, I believe I'd still be bleeding inside.

My Christmas will be all the merrier because of all of you. So, merry Christmas to you, one and all! When I give thanks for my blessings, each of you are counted among them.