Social Journeyman.

In Baseball, a Journeyman is someone who has traveled the leagues and knows them well. Being recognized, experienced, but never distinguished. Someone who jumps around back and forth trying to fit in wherever he sees an opportunity to keep their career going longer.

Sometimes it's someone who had a stellar past and trying to be relevant in the future. Or someone who has outlasted a club's previous "glory" seasons and now needs a new home to hopefully find one that's just blossoming.

The Internet and Social Networks are exactly the same.

I first dipped my toes into the Social Network waters in 2002 when I joined the about-to-explode site Melodramatic.com It really was all the rage back in high school. If you were part of this small phenomenon you were always watching your Karma and trying to post on people's G-Spots. Yeah, it was immature and gaudy and it was just a nice way to lurk the profiles of fellow peers.

It was my first taste of being able to connect with many people, friends and strangers, at once outside physical social interaction. That love affair ended only after less than two years once the people behind the site stopped caring about it. So people began to jump ship. LiveJournal, where I had a brief stint but hated having to skin and HTML all my posts, which was one of the more popular ones. But it led to the internet crawling with "Do you have codes I can have?" posts everywhere.

There was also DeadJournal, a weird alternative for kids who thought they were rebelling against something that didn't matter, but I never joined these ranks.

But as all these teens wandered the InternetSahara Friendster was gaining steam. It was more advanced than Melo, what we "cool kids" called Melodramatic, and it required less lurking and more socializing. Not something that was flying real well with 18 year olds.

I was on Friendster for about a week. No one I really wanted to communicate with jumped on board and aesthetically it wasn't appealing. Friendster was the precursor to Facebook in the way people hated/loved it.

Around this time I had begun hearing rumblings about a new website called "MySpace". I checked it out and decided to join. It was a combination of blues and stark whites. It was just a little boutique store front compared to the mega-mall it is now.

But the people slowly began to trickle in. It offered the ease to find your friends, post anything, and lurk with the social scope of the other more "mature" sites while still giving you the luxury of anonimity.

Tom was just another member. Interaction seemed local. It felt genuinely West Coast. Laid back. And crawling with people we knew about but didn't know.

This is what became Home. AIM was falling by the wayside and it was much easier to keep in touch with friends and strangers through MySpace. I met some wonderful people through it and made bonds with my current friends even stronger.

Since 2003 I had called MySpace my home online. Sometimes becoming more important than direct e-mail.

The problem's became noticeable when I noticed I was growing up but MySpace wasn't. They had no incentive to. They became bigger, better equipped, more influential but still strived for the same goals they were trying to meet since their inception. I was growing up but the kids behind me were the ones who now craved what MySpace offered.

This club had gone beyond the glory days I was used to and was now catering to a new generation.

Valerie had sent me an invite to Facebook when we were still in Film School. I had an account but it was dormant. I had no use for it. I didn't know enough people to keep me coming back and the ones I did know on Facebook also had MySpace's.

Plus, in my eyes Facebook was the East Coast MySpace. In aesthetic and function. Facebook was born on East Coast college campuses and MySpace was blossoming on sandy Southern California beaches and culture.

These past few years have been the most enlightening to my life and existence. The reasons why I kept on going every day.

Late 2008, I was in a strange transitional stage. My friends and I were moving onto new things. Bigger things. Choices and Life Changes.

I made the jump to Facebook.

It was drastic. For the first time in 5 years I was out of my element online. I had to learn new functions . New rules. And find new objectives.

But it felt right. It was adult. The people I wanted to be around were there. So were the others I didn't want to lose touch with.

It was like jumping from the American to the National League.

I can see my days at MySpace dimming personally. It's a site I hold close to my heart, essentially being a modern way to grow up in our society.

But Facebook is where my new opportunities are. The future is there.

It probably won't be the last Social Network I join, and after time Facebook will also fall by the wayside.

But I feel comfortable there now. I hadn't joined before but I think it was justified.

And the past 5 years were spent on a place that grew with me. And I loved it.
Now I will grow again in a new direction with a new site. And I can't wait to love it too.

"We press on, we press on.
I'm guessing that we're close..."
-No Trigger, "Tundra Kids"