An Old Blog and A Look Back

 My creativity waned when I was in my corporate marketing job. The environment was toxic for me. I worked a while in the aughts on a novel that didn't come to pass. Ironically, long before Christine would divine our current cat would be named Zoë, the book was to be called Zoë's Missing. 

I'd read an article about a young woman in Dallas being abducted, and the diligent efforts of her circle of friends in an artsy and techy area of the city helped keep up awareness until she was rescued. They used the communication tools of the moment in the process. 

I thought a novel focused on a circle of tech-savvy friends deploying their skills to save a lost pal might be exciting. 

I came up with a backstory that would explain the reason for the kidnapping of the fictional Zoë, things involving her parents and laundered money and things that were not her fault.

I had a couple of slightly older characters in the mix, divorced guy living among the younger people and a widow who'd become friends with the missing girl.  By older, then, I mean they were in their '40s. 

There was a bit of a love story for them as they worked with young coders and web designers.

Phones with cameras were new and blogs were a thing, and there was one young guy who held movie screenings of obscure flicks he found on DVD. Spider Baby had just been resurrected around then, so that was one he'd shown for its novelty.

I was working with the web by day and navigating how it would be deployed for business and constantly dealing with new developments. I was kind of excited by the elements that were burgeoning, and I was often off to tech conferences in Seattle and hither and yon. 

I started reading blogs via an aggregator, many of them created by tech-oriented people in startups and the like. 

I followed one young lady's blog for a while because she had a tech degree and was struggling through early jobs, all while planning her wedding, caring for a new cat and shopping. 

That blog's long gone, of course, but I ran across it not long ago via the Wayback Machine and read a few passages, some sad moments about the loss of a cat friend. A few other ups and downs with work and family were recounted in short passages as well.

All this was 20 years ago. Made me think as many things do about how fast time flies. Also made me empathize anew a bit, feel the pain of ups and downs for the young lady, now all memory.

Checked around the socials but couldn't really find the blogger nor her husband in the usual places. The zeal of documenting life must have been overtaken by the challenges of life and other concerns. 

Helped make me get back to this blog I started around the same time, though. 

I'll catch a few more snapshots, for myself or someone else to check somewhere on the other side of here and now.