Introduction
by Alyssa Avant on June 22, 2007
in Just Me
Welcome back!
Though I already write a blog weekly on my ministry website and I am a writer for the Christian Living section of Two Moms in a Blog I thought it’d be fun to have a fun blog, just about life, life from my laptop that is. Though many of my family and friends are unaware, I am a self-proclaimed Internet Junkie. I must confess, My name is Alyssa and I am an Internet Junkie! My obsession began back in high school. I remember when the Internet first became popular and I first was allowed to get online in school in the 9th grade. It was absolutely fascinating to me. We didn’t get Internet at my house immediately, I remember only getting to be online very limited amounts of time, until I was out of high school, and in college, then my parents got the Internet for me to use with my studies.
I became very engrossed online when I began planning my wedding. I got engaged the summer after I graduated high school in 1999 and had my wedding to plan for the following summer, June 2000. I began researching everything for my wedding online, even booking my honeymoon online. I also connected with other girls out there who were planning their weddings on message boards, in chat rooms and even chatted via instant messengers such as Yahoo Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger. I even got to meet one of those friends when she came near my hometown in 2004 on a business trip with her husband she actually drove 2 more hours south to meet me and come to my home. That was very cool to me!
I have a bunch of online friends, most of which I have never met, though I would love to one day. I communicate with some of them more often than I communicate with people right here in my own town. I really love being able to communicate with people sometimes 100’s or 1000’s of miles away from me. This age of technology that we live in is phenomenal to me. Though, yes, it is a bit scary at times, one can certainly use their own best judgment and make wise decisions regarding who and who not to connect with or chat with online.
The cool thing about meeting people online is something that might sound like well duh, but to someone who isn’t “up on” the Internet age or the connections you can make via the Net, it is true, “they are REAL people.” Sometimes, we can sit in our houses online and chat via instant messengers or chat rooms and feel like that this person is not “real” but in reality they are just like us. To me that is one of the very best parts of life on the Net, life from my laptop, I am connecting with other people who I might have never ever been able to connect with, much less influence.
I am amazed at how I have been able to influence and help others online. You see over a year ago now I took my ministry to girls and their moms to the Net. I bought the domain name beautybydesignonline.com and took my passion for tween and teen girls, their relationships with their moms and God to to the world wide web as it used to be referred to years ago. Now, I am able to send out a weekly ezine with my own devotions, articles, tips and advice to moms of tween and teen girls. One-hundred and eighty ladies actually subscribe to this weekly publication to hear from me. That is wild! But oh so cool!
And soon, I will be broadcasting my very own Radio Show from my tiny little home in small town Mississippi, via the world of internet radio and podcasting. I can even make my show available from Itunes.com . How cool is that? Though I haven’t gotten into it yet, if I wanted to I could even create my own videos for others to watch via Youtube.com . What we fondly refer to as the Internet or the World Wide Web is literally our ticket to the world and reaching it in every way possible, that to me is an amazing opportunity. One that I plan to take full advantage of in every way that I can in the days ahead. So come on along with me on my journey through life, via my laptop.
