4 October, 1998

Mourning Olio

As I trolled through my bookmarks today, I felt like I was going through a box old things, forgotten at the back of the closet. Treasures, once shining brightly, sifting through my fingers like worn pebbles, comfortable and warm to the touch.

One of these was olio.

As I watched the familiar screen flicker to life, frozen forever (or until Jen stops paying the ISP/working on the web) in its last incarnation, a repository of personal narratives couched in a cozy kaffee-klatsch kitchen design.

I peruse the contents, turning the pages, rediscovering old friends and sigh, thinking of the piece I'd been working on for olio right before it stopped. I never finished the piece.

Olio had a fairly profound effect on my "webness". I was a frequent reader and occasional writer during what I'm coming to think of as my hey day of online writing and meeting. Since olio stopped refreshing, I have reached out to fewer people, designed fewer new projects and written less "creative" things. I have pulled back and retrenched until just about the only thing I write with some degree of consistency, is journal entries.

I wonder what happened to all those conversations, haltingly begun, which have petered out into a great silence. I look at my fingers run over the keys and ponder dropping Jen a note. I have not written her for several weeks. No, make that months. Others of my contacts through olio have gone in a similar way ... making a case for the ephemerality of friendliness over the web.

Or maybe it's just me. In the last 2 years my immediate world has shrunk drastically. It's just Sabs and I, and the cats, with occasional friendly visits to long-time friends. No longer do we have even the semblance of an active social life, as it was, 9 months ago.

It's mostly our own fault, I realize. I feel overwhelmed with ... well everything and Sabs has had a hectic few months at work. But the truth of the matter is that we have been lazy friends nd even lazier correspondants.

But I miss everyone, I really do.

So here's an October resolution: 1) to try and write at least once a week to some of these kind people that I connected with a year ago, and see what happens. 2) Call our friends, go out for Sunday brunch have some folk over for dinner and break out of this tedium-cycle we've locked ourselves into.

In the meantime, I'm still mourning olio for the inspiration it gave me and the space it created for sharing memories and feelings.