I have had numerous web identities in the past. My first ever website, a free one provided by Angelfire, was a list of songs containing the word ‘Wanna’ in their title. I only listed about 100 titles, roughly 10% of which were tracks by the Ramones. Since then I created and maintained sites relating to music, writing and, finally, myself. All of them, in the end, slid off the edge of the cybermap, largely because of my tendency to return to my creations and shamefully delete them.

I have decided to create a blog in which, theoretically, I can contain my digital life. Rather than committing to any one project, I can experiment and collate the results here.

At the moment, for example, I am trying to learn to write drabbles, a form to which I have been introduced by a good friend whose work can also be read online. My drabbles are non-fiction pieces, taking the form of autobiographical memories. Whereas an autobiography might have a strong narrative component, my pieces are concerned with individual moments that are characterised, in my memory, by vivid sense experience or emotions. I am still working out how best to use the form, and some of my pieces are much worse than others. I hope, though, that they will all be of interest as an insight into my memory of the past.

As I learn more about other digital phenomena such as photography and internet radio, I am sure that my web identity will evolve. In cyber terms, I feel prehistoric since I still rely on a dial-up connection and have little knowledge of precisely what the web has to offer. That is not to say that I am a Luddite or lacking in knowledge completely - I have been using the Internet for years and, similarly, for years I have been boring friends with rants about the virtues of Google. But I am yet to properly organise myself online, working out what the best resources are and learning to spot which ones not to bother with. This year, I intend to resolve that, experimenting online and seeing just how useful the Internet can be. I have always been convinced by arguments that say technological advances are pointless unless we know how to use them to enhance our lives. There is always the threat that to develop an online identity will be at the expense of my real life one. I would like to explore this notion and see if I can contradict it, genuinely developing my digital life in order to enhance my real life.