Ben, where have you been?...

Decided to set up a Devianart account 5 years ago. I liked the idea of my art getting a little extra exposure than if I were to just post it on Organic Metal and thought the whole community networking thing is pretty neat.

But then the internet went a bit mental with pretty much everyone getting into social networking or getting their work on Deviantart, or mySpace or Facebook. I can't exactly explain why, but the more people that seem to get into the whole internet scene, the less I like it. I'm now only logging into my DA, MS and FB accounts a few times each year, and even then I can't say I'm particularly interested in checking out what people are up to or updating my own pages.

Maybe I'm taking things too seriously, but there seems to be a lot of 'competing for popularity' on a lot of these kinda sites and I'm bored of it (or maybe I'm just jealous? ). Also, after reading hundreds of journal entries, thousands of comments, tens of thousands of forum posts, I feel I've come to a point where there's no a lot left on net I haven't read or experienced!

So, things seem to have pretty much gone full circle for me. I've gone from being one of those internet virgins that does little more than Google a few random sites for research purposes, to someone who got heavily into forums, social networking sites, IM, gaming, downloading etc. for several years, and now I'm back to mainly using the net for a bit of research here and there and checking my email every so often! It's quite weird when I think about it.

I've got no immediate plans to get back to regular posting on Devianart or any of site for that matter. Just happy living life unplugged and doing my own thing

I do feel a guilty for not staying in contact with the hundreds of web buddies I've made over the years or not living up to expectations of my small niche fan-base, but I feel that in life you just gotta 'do what you want' and be prepared to migrate from one phase in your life to the next without giving it too much thought and being weighed down by the past.

Other than losing interest in DA and the like, I wouldn't/don't have had much time to visit anyway. I ended up staying on for another year at Uni to get a BA and successfully graduated top of my class (take that Keel Toys, you b@stards!*), as I mentioned in the last entry, I was also working part time with Optimum Fitness for a while, followed by a short spell of retail work, followed by running a video game business, while taking on the odd freelance design job. I've now traversed into a new art-based career path which is looking promising (I wont go into details right now though )

Before I sign off for 2009, I wanted to say a big thanks to anyone who visits my DA page or Organic Metal and leaves a positive comment. Really appreciate it.