Me: No – I type exactly as I’m thinking it & then just hit send. Why?

Friend: Sometimes editing isn’t so bad. I mean, the good part is it really feels like you’re talking to me, the bad part is you write stuff like, “and the challenging part of that is wait.. my dog is barfing and …whoah. wait. no. he’s good. ok so the challenging part… omg seriously dog?”

Mr. Lighthart has lived around the world, speaks three languages, was married and ran businesses so my first reaction upon hearing him identified was “won’t his friends and family be so happy to have found him?”

Yet, during the NPR interview with the Seattle Times writer, I learned that maybe that’s an old fashioned thought. For the end of the interview concluded with the writer saying, “Somewhere there is an apartment and a computer waiting for Mr. Lighthart.”

A computer? Really?

It saddened me greatly to hear this comment but then I thought, it’s probably true. Life is now so often disconnected from real human contact; we think we’re more connected but really, we’re just more plugged in. We can hide behind text messages, emails, twitters and updates which is supposed to mean we care but really, it doesn’t. It doesn’t make us more responsible to our neighbours, our friends, our family. It allows us to identify missing people quickly but not to act quickly in helping them out.

It was strange to me that this story, that I heard 12 hours after his identity was revealed, was told with him having no papers, ID, friends or family coming to claim him or help him. All he had was an apartment and a computer somewhere, we think.

At a certain part in your life. Probably when too much of it has gone by. You will open your eyes and see yourself for who you are. Especially for everything that made you so different from all the awful normals. And you will say to yourself, “But I am this person.” And in that statement, that correction, there will be a kind of love. – Miss Dodger, Phoebe in Wonderland

This morning I was walking my dog and just a few feet in front of me was a little blond girl, maybe four or five, who was walking very slowly. And in between walking very slowly she’d stop at every single flower, lean in, inhale and then walk to the next. In Santa Monica, CA, this could take awhile as there are flowers and tended gardens everywhere.

And apparently it was as the father, who obviously trying to get somewhere, was further ahead of her pushing her baby brother in a stroller, called out to her, “Honey, you don’t have to smell every flower”

To which she replied in all earnestness, “Oh, but Daddy, I do!”

At this point, the father sighed that sigh of ‘I tried’ and just waited at the corner while he daughter greeted and smelled every flower in that block. And since I was walking my dog who was the same size as her and excited by her little bouncy movements, I stopped moving and just stood with Jack as we watched her do what she needed to do.

And somehow, even though all the grown ups had to get somewhere, even though this would probably make us late, and it was something we maybe didn’t comprehend, it ended up being one of the best walks ever as I think we all saw new things. And I know I learned something: that yellow flower #4 on the left is called “Rebecca”.

Europe Shananigans from alex beauchamp on Vimeo.

A little video made and edited by me of a spur of the moment spring trip back to London, Luxembourg and Paris. Here are some links to the places stayed and and transportation used:

Flight: British Airways Business Class, which they call Club World (San Francisco-London | London to Luxembourg | Paris to Los Angeles). With the new BA Terminal in London, you get access to the most amazing lounge and spa so from this point of view, it’s worth it. I flew on the top of the plane coming back and it made a world of difference; it was quieter, more private and had way better service. I’m going to book that upper section from now on.

London Hotel: The Levin Hotel. Loved this hotel from the location to the rooms to the service. It’s right by Harrods which means fantastic tube access, walking distance to mostly everything and it makes you feel as though you’re living in a London Flat. It’s a small boutique property that is stylish without being snooty and extraordinarily reasonably priced for the class of hotel and location. Loved. It.

Luxembourg: I’d never been before and ended up staying with a friend who had a lovely flat within easy walking distance to the city centre. We drove all over the country in a day (in a mini cooper, so fun!), seeing about half a dozen castles. All I have to show for this whole trip is 3 photos! So bad!

Luxembourg to Paris: TGV 1st Class. It only took a couple of hours and I’d recommend paying for 1st. There isn’t a huge difference in price but there is a huge difference in seating, service and quiet.

Paris Hotel: Hotel Particulier Montmartre. I normally stay at the Four Seasons in Paris because of its incredible service and location but I had heard raving things about Hotel Particulier and decided to try it. It was beyond incredible and I loved my nights here (and had the best bath ever) although I have to say, staying in Montmartre is not my favourite area (it’s just inconvenient to a lot of places I go to and friends I see).

And the little orange cat is my partner in crime, Chat du Voyage! It gets more photo time than I do!

For the still photos: See My Flickr Set.

Although I can’t pull off a “s’up” or wear baggy trousers round my bum, I am, in fact, old school.

Old school geek and social networker, that is.

Until the age of 8 (or 1982) I spent most of my time outdoors, playing with legos, drawing, creating forts and reading. But then a friend of the family who was an engineer got a Commodore 64 and while the parents talked politics after dinner, I sat and hacked away at that thing. In 1984 my school bought a couple of Apple II computers, one of which I ended up hogging for hours on end and staying after school so that I could code and code to make that little turtle move around and make pretty things.

After a couple of years of pestering my parents for a computer, “a compu-what?” my father took me to some office supply warehouse where a man began to talk to my father about what he had in stock. My father stopped the man, pointed to me and said, “You need to talk to her.” The salesman looked at me; the littlest, blondest girl in the biggest dress you ever saw wanted to talk floppy drives, memory and modem speed. I was so incredibly proud when I put in an order for some hacked together PC-clone. A month later we picked it up and I began coding games and small programs in DOS Basic between going to school, building forts in the forrest and putting dresses on Barbies.

In 1986 I discovered local BBS (bulletin board systems) in which you’d use your modem (at the time, 300 baud) to connect to another modem that hosted a site so you could talk to people. This was pre-world wide web days. Most of the people I talked to were guys who were outcasts because they were geeks. It wasn’t yet cool or lucrative. In fact, one tended to be rather quiet about owning a computer or worse yet, being a modemmer! Yet these geeks taught me a lot about computers and coding and, since they were local, about connecting the virtual world to a real one. I started arranging local meet-ups for us from playing sports on the weekend to attending special events. I didn’t think being online had to be separate from the real world.

Over the next few years I kept progressing with coding and modem speed (oh, a 1200 baud modem! A 2400 baud modem! Oh my, not a 9600 baud modem!!). In the early nineties something new was being pioneered; it was when a central computer would hook up to another computer somewhere else in the world. No longer did you have to settle for local geeks – you could go international! I began making friends in New Zealand, in the Caymans, in Italy and I learned the true meaning of “social networking.”

Around 1992 I stopped using a computer all together when I began my travels and it wasn’t until 1995 when I visited a friend in Vancouver did I see where the world of computers and modems had gone too. There was now Windows 95 to make computing easy and hardrives that held more space than those floppies ever could. Computers were becoming more mainstream yet the web still had a ways to go. There was, however, a new development in connecting – IRC Chat. And I hopped on there from time to time, chatting with family and old friends and meeting new ones. I really liked this idea and decided to build a quick and permanent way for people to know me and connect.

So in 1995, using my friend’s computer, I put up my very first web page (seen above). I used Netscape Navigator and hosted it on their site. I put things up that were important – photos, about me, a diary to keep people updated and an email link. Because the web was relatively new I didn’t understand how people could find me (I thought you had to tell them the web site address) and that it could go to anyone in the world with a modem. I thought just my few close friends would read it. Little did I know. One of the people I met online was the creator/coder of a site called, Jennicam. She and I hit it off and chatted a lot on IRC. She introduced me to her two friends, one in Germany (hi Duckie!) and one in Washington DC (hi Oolong!) who were responsible for all the gadgets and the keeping of her site running. At one point in 1996, she got tired of running her cam and sent it to me (I still have this). Between borrowing a computer and my online friends, I managed to hook up that little black and white quick cam, run about 6 programs and get a snap shot up to the web once every 2 minutes. I really thought just my family and my friends that I told would see it (by the way, there was never, ever any naked photos . It was literally me sitting at a computer typing. Not. Thrilling!). Again, little did I know.

Soon, I started to receive an average of 500 emails a day which was overwhelming since I only got to go on the computer once or twice a week. Then I got a notice from my free web host that I had to move because I was using too much bandwidth – I didn’t even know what bandwidth was! So I went to a company that allowed me to buy a subdomain (at this time, owing domains was almost either impossible or prohibitively expensive). I bought dreamy.simplenet.com which worked for awhile until a few months later I received a $5K bill for one months usage – my normal was $10 a month! My site had become so popular and written about world-wide that  I  had used so much bandwidth that I had to then pay for. These were before the times of unlimited usage and when servers couldn’t handle 80K visitors a day.

At this time I was being asked for interviews from all over; people wanted me on their TV shows, they wanted to fly me here and there, they wanted quotes, they wanted me to be a spokesperson for their products or sites. Fans wanted me to sign autographs or marry them. It was far too much for me because I didn’t feel as though the web site I had created – which was nothing more than a pure vanity site – warranted that kind of attention. I hadn’t done anything of use, I hadn’t used my influencer status for good, I just used it to connect to people far away in a ridiculous (to me) manner.

At this time, Jennicam came back online because she saw the potential in making money, on how to handle the fans/press – that was something that was important to her and to a lot of up and coming girl sites at that time (interesting to note that it seems like anything that first “allows” women or that women get into almost always goes down the sex route – if you’re a girl online you must run a naked web cam or site, right?). I was asked to be part of this whole group and marketing endeavor being taken on by not only Jennicam but other companies that were wanting to exploit all of this. Since I didn’t want to do that or be known for that or make money in that way, I said no, took my site down, and kind of went into web-hiding for awhile.

Over the years I kept borrowing a computer, checking on online developments but I never actually got back into computers/the web full-time until 1998 when I moved in with a boyfriend who had a computer. Times had changed a little, there were more sites, more possibilities, so I got back on, began coding, began trying to build things of use, and tried again at connecting to others.  I kept a diary (there wasn’t Blogger or Wordpress – it was all hand coded, baby) and that was about it. There weren’t digital cameras to post a million photos nor were there readily available scanners. So once in awhile I’d turn the cam on (now password protected) and wave to my mum or show her things around my flat. Bandwidth was still an issue so it was more sporadic. Besides, I was more interested in content and connected than in just being famous.

But my personal site kept attracting people and write ups (a girl online was a novelty amongst all the science and business sites) and I decided that if people were going to come, I had better be useful, otherwise there was no point. At this time, there wasn’t really a way to monetize on the web and it wasn’t really a thought of most people who had sites. Most sites were built out of a love for something and the wanting to share that with others. Building sites at this time was hard, hosting was hard or expensive, getting the word out was even harder (there was no Google and Yahoo had a crazy ranking system). Those of us who kept sharing information did so not to get rich, but to get connected. I bought my own domain, got my own hosting, and started to write about life with the goal of being useful instead of personal. Between 200K-300K people came to this site every day and slowly, but surely, became part of a loyal community that carried me through my next web chapter.

In 2001 when I quit my corporate job to pursue a creative career, I began Girl at Play because I hadn’t been able to find online (or in any books, really) what really happened to someone when they quit a secure job to become creatively self-employed. Personal blogs were still relatively new because they were hard to create and maintain. But because of my geek experience and love of hand-coding, I was able to build my own site and write almost daily what I had to do to make the transition. As far as I know, this hadn’t really been done online; I had created one of the first personal business sites, first business blog and one of the first online art communities (the site received about 150K a day).  That site spawned so much media attention, work for me, followers and community that I’m still in awe of all that it has done and how many people it has spurred into action by either creating their own business or site/blog. I launched Another Girl at Play in 2002 in response to that site, to show more female creative entrepreneurs and I can safely say that my sites built up a lot of well known female artists that you see buzzing around the web today and connected them to each other and their audience. These sites were created before ads went on, before it was cool to be a web personality, before creating an online personal brand was expected. They were created because there was a passion and a need. Geek girl does good, basically.

Over the years I’ve built more web sites and communities because I really am passionate about sharing information and connecting to people. For me, social networking isn’t a new term I throw around to cash in on the newest web fad but something that began back in the early 80’s when connected took hard work, lots of patience, and total passion. I’m a huge believer in doing what you love and being a geek girl is something I love – even though I’ve always continued to have a “real life” offline, kept up my travels and a real social circle. I think you can (and should) have both world – the virtual and real. The trick, I think, is to be conscious and honest of what you’re doing in both which is why I’ve never been anonymous online or work with or take on any site/project which doesn’t mesh with what I believe in.

Of course, now it’s almost standard to have a site, to blog, to Twitter, to connect on Facebook. A girl doesn’t have to hide her geekiness anymore; in fact, geek is chic. I sometimes struggle with the web and its purpose now, how it’s changed and changed people. But that’s a whole other post. This one’s just history, the next one is the future.

The strange thing about the celebrities were that they were mostly TV actors – I do not have a TV, I have never had a TV and I have never worked on TV. So how Brad Garret got into my dream, I’ll never know (mind you he was just running down the hill with his dogs on his cell phone. We didn’t really chat).

But before I was to cross the PHC highway to go up the hill to my place, my name was called. I whirl around and there is Suzanne Somers with her 3 young children and her mother, Connie Stevens.

“Why Miss Alex! Come and say hi!”

“Hi Miss Somers what a nice surprise to see you out here.”

We hug. She’s bundled up because it’s winter and we’re on a rocky beach. So I fix her scarf and she hands me her cup of hot milk. We talk real estate. I point to the direction I’m in and how I love it here. How I felt so judged in Kirkland but out here was a breath of fresh air.

“I don’t know how you lasted so long!”

Then she introduces me to her mother and I say we met last weekend at the picnic. The one Marcia Cross hosted (in fairness, I do see her around town all the time and her hair dresser is a good friend). Oh right, says Connie, all cute in pigtails.

As we’re talking we see a couple of celebrities whiz by in the back of a pick up. We say how it’s changing here and how they’re building mansions into the rock cliff. But that for the next few years it should stay the same and that’s good for now.

I then wake up into reality.

I do my morning routine, then I check my email and there’s an email from a place I’ve never visitied online or on TV – HSN.com.

Coincidence? I think not.

Please go out there and do. Live. Don’t be the same as yesterday. Don’t live vicariously online. Don’t use language that has no meaning or talk ideas you don’t really live. Don’t hide. Don’t copy others or live their ideas or life. Don’t fear doing your thing. Don’t fear doing. Instead of reading a decorating magazine, paint that room. Instead of thinking of baking, do up a cake. Run, walk, bike. Put that self help book down and pick up yourself.

Let go of the snark, your worries, your anger and fear and give into possibility, action, joy and life. Do. Do some more. Stop thinking about you. Stop blogging about just you and your kid and your pet. There’s a world out there to connect to, really connect to. Being of use is more important than being popular. Think about the lady down the street, the person at the drive through, the man fallen in the street, about politics, the environment, healthcare, another country and then do something about it. Never stop at thinking.

Dream big, work harder. Have lots of fun, lift a finger, do something for someone else. Cheer your friends on. Cheer yourself up. Celebrate as much as possible. Enjoy everything. Right now. It’s OK to want more and do more but be present with where you are or who you are with. Don’t rush the situation – even if it’s bad. Move on when you can. Don’t settle. Try everything you can and get over everything holding you back.

Go outside. Go outside yourself. Make a difference, make some change. Don’t complain about someone unless you’re talking to that someone. Don’t complain about a situation you’re not willing to make better. They don’t have it better and you don’t have it worse. Don’t make excuses. You’ll never see possibility if you do. And you’re smart and worth more than settling for a life of complaining and limitation.

Hope. Hope more. Give someone else hope. Get healthy and contribute to a healthy environment. Think about everything you do, you buy, you say. Only be lazy on Sunday and even then, be conscious. Rest is useful, giving up is not.

Play. Remember what it’s like to be seven. Remember to listen to a seven year old because you just have more words and life experience, not necessarily more wisdom. Have more questions than answers and don’t put everything into words. Sometimes just feel things and be. Be quiet more often, listen harder, talk exactly as you mean to.

Strive for your best and not what you think someone elses’ best is. Follow through. Don’t let others’ down. Don’t let yourself down. You are better than your circumstances. Ask for what you’re worth. Make magic happen don’t wish for it. Don’t envy others’ lives, envy yours. Live it fully. Teach by example how to live well, how to be treated, how to be kind, how to be alive.

Do. I can’t stress that one enough. Take action on your life. Make the change. No more sulking, waiting, thinking, reading, talking about. It’s time. You’re ready.

I didn’t grow up with a television and have never owned one as an adult. The reason for this is quite simple: I’m very guarded about what comes into my life because if I’m not, the wrong things can easily take over.

For example, a few years ago my friend, who also had always lacked a television, and I had a girly weekend at the Ritz in Los Angeles – Club Level. At our disposal was a spa, swimming pool, trails, bikes, and privy to Club Level, a lounge with several (free) food servings each day. We had a sprawling two-room suite with an amazing balcony that had an unbelievable view. And in our room were two of the largest Sony televisions we had ever seen.

Since we’d both gone without TV, we turned one on and showing was the story of a 500lb man on the Discovery Channel. We. Could. Not. Stop. Watching. We said during commercials we’d go out once the show was over but that didn’t happen. For the two tonne twins came up after that. And after that was some other show on obesity.

After three hours I turned off the tv as with both laid lifeless on the bed.

“Do you want to ride bikes now?” I asked.

“No, I don’t feel like it. What about swimming?”

“I can’t get into my bikini! I feel fat!”

We had become so absorbed by other peoples lives that we were unable to lead our own despite the fact we were in one of the most incredible settings for the sole purpose of having fun.

So that is why there is a lack of TV in my home and always has been. This has, at times in certain groups, made me somewhat of a social outcast in America since so many references and inside jokes seem to be TV lines (it was only a year ago thanks to YouTube I got the whole “No soup for you” thing). But I get away with not knowing a lot because I didn’t grow up in America and because I actually know more than I should by paying attention to all the conversations that people have about pop culture (I can tell you a surprising about of random TV facts).

The point is, I’ve managed really well without TV in a TV world. Then I realised that my TV was the Internet and that was bombarding me and my subconscious far too much without any useful benefit. It was, instead of me feeling inspired and creative, was making me feel like I was watching bad television and feeling unfit to do anything about it afterwards.

Since being online since 1995 I’ve seen all the trends of the web world and have been a part of a lot of them. I’ve been web famous several times (it comes and goes), created lots of communities, hung out with the geeks, the cool kids and followed all the web pages, news and dish that’s gone along with it.

It wasn’t until over a year ago that I began to really question the internet and how it affected me. The internet and I were in one of those tumultuous relationships where we’d break up then makeup with fervor. We were codependent yet I’d never thought to ask why since I figured it had to be in my life – since most of it seemed to have replaced my life.

But last year I was recruited by a company to build community for its sites by writing content and connect people I knew (writers, artists, leaders in their industries) to the sites. I was suspicious but not enough to say no; I loved a challenge, I loved the idea of doing what I did on a bigger scale and I loved the idea more of helping people I knew get more exposure.

However I quickly learned that the company was more about page count than useful content. They wanted to be the “biggest distributer of content” on the internet – even if it was (by their own admission) very bad content. They wanted page views and sign ups which in my opinion, is not community. It didn’t get people helping people and it didn’t get people living life. IAnd in my efforts I was being asked to abuse personal and professional relationships that took me years to develop for their sites and gain but not for that of the writers or the community. Instead of being a voice of service in verticals I was passionate about and helping people I knew gain exposure, I quickly became a high-paid talent manager for bad sites and disgruntled friends.

After a lot of internal discussion to get my job to be like the actual job description I wrote when I agreed to come on and the company doing everything they could to keep me from doing that description, I realised that the company didn’t work the way I did and I had to quit.

And that left me to wonder, where in the web world do I belong?

I had, at this time, also joined a few social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. It was easy to develop connections on these sites without publicly mentioning I was on any of them. I truly thought it’d be a great way to connect with friends, learn about people, and find another job.

What I quickly realised, however, was that these “social networking” tools are more for complaining or marketing. They don’t really connect people. They give people the false sense of connection, of community but I believe the human spirit can’t be transmitted via a few www characters and so something goes personally unfilled. But we don’t know what so we try doing more on the web because it’s like the new drug only you can’t escape it. Being on it isn’t really a choice nowadays, is it?

But I decided to test my networks. After all, I had put years of helping people on the web, connecting people to jobs, to friends, to this and that. But when I put out a call our for help, hardly anything came back. I tried to figure out why and saw that some friends had 1000 friends – of course my message was getting lost. And if it was getting lost then there wasn’t communicating going on – just direct marketing.

At this time, more and more friends started to use these tools and as a result, I began to like people less and less. All of a sudden I knew the exact moment they were happy! Sad! In a meeting! Out of a meeting! Depressed! Dumped! Eating cake! And on and on. I began knowing so many useless things about people that I felt I didn’t know how to talk to them (how do you call to ask, “How are you?” when Facebook just told you 5 minutes ago?).

Then, the marketing came. It was bad when it was strangers doing it but when friends started to tell me about every blog update, every site update, every sale, everything in their life I should go pay attention to right now – it was too much. And I had to decide how much did I want to know about my friends in order for me to want to remain their friend?

I realised that, like with the TV, my life had become too absorbed by useless things on the internet. That the reasons why I loved it (sharing information, getting people off their asses to do things, really connecting) were not the reasons why I was on it and the tools I was using was not supporting this either. I had to cut the fat which can be a rather tricky thing to do.

I can’t eat gluten – a protein found in almost all foods. It sucks because I adore food. I specifically adore baked goods and gluten is in flour. So when my bff at the time (over a year and a half ago) began to constantly Twitter about all the food she ate and had nothing but food on her Flickr, I had to remove her. I just couldn’t take reading and looking at food that I couldn’t have anything to do with. She took my virtual removal to mean real one and I haven’t heard from her since.

With this round of removals from social networking sites I wonder if people will be personally offended if I don’t know what they ate for lunch even though I send them a handwritten note often. I wonder if my BFF will think I’m not vested in her because I didn’t see her Facebook photos even though I’m at her house every week. I wonder if I’ll seem unhip to hire because even though I believe in the power of the internet and connecting people with information and experiences online, I want people to use all that to connect fully offline. And like TV, I still talk to people about it all and pay attention to what’s going on, even if I don’t tweet about it all.

I have done better, I believe, without having a TV. I’m hoping the same will be true with the reduction of “social networking” and keeping myself in check with how I use it. Because the internet, like TV, isn’t bad, evil or soul-destroying. It’s a tool that can be used either for building or destroying. It just depends on what you do with it.