Tomorrow is Myke's birthday, lol.
Two years ago I went through an unimaginable upheaval interrupting all my plans and goals and challenging me with a financial commitment that I never dreamed I'd have to make. @bonenado and I scraped up several thousand $$ putting together a rescue operation for a plan that has no guarantee of payback, much less actually working. With our lives already flipping upside down over rumors of a company sale coming up on top of two new babies and all the extra complications that entailed, and that on top of my ongoing recovery plan, we somehow pulled rabbits out of hats and found ways to not only keep the original plan from epic fail, but extend it with further commitment to a fandom, of all things.
While we made our own commitments, Myke was making his, and he freely opened SyfyDesigns.com to me as a campsite, an anchor, a network of other people who helped keep me emotionally stabilized while I made my way through one of the most complicated messes I've been through since bankruptcy and my disability case, and that was way less stressful than the Xanga server move disrupting my plans and years of hard work.
The SGA Rising twitter gang meeting in chat for watch parties was the start of my extension to other very real people in the Stargate Atlantis fandom trying to get together beyond twitter, and after considerable effort I readapted back to both chat and forum after years of fandom absence, and from there leaped back to the Lexx fandom and financially committed to the LittleLexx.net forum.
Without Myke in my life during the Xanga crisis, without his merry band of SGA miscreants, without their continual public and private support and the eventual pull into the #SnarkAlecs, I may never have hung on through the stress. Because Myke was there for me, because his friends were there for me, because more of their friends were there for me, I am still here.
Along the way, my plans grew tenfold. My goals have become super goals. The continual support helped me grow and flex new muscles, gave me confidence when the ground fell out from under me, made me feel like part of a team and, even more, part of the world I'd reclused away from for so long. Along the way #aspienado became a thing, then #Lexxperience and Lexxperience.com, things I never originally planned on but which helped merge my networks into a whole new blog empire goal set with an all new Pinky blog commandeering my rescued blog fleet, and then twitter hashtag days filled my sails with the wind I needed. Now everything I'm doing goes far beyond my original plans, something I've dreamed of but never expected when I first started back up.
I owe Myke so much for my first real bridge back out of myself into the general internet public, into helping me create a new way of interacting that would ultimately keep me on a positive and emotionally healthy track toward my goals. We had no idea at the time, of course. Everything was touch and go on the fly. It was me hanging on by my fingernails, and exactly what I needed when I needed something the most.
SyfyDesigns.com has grown along the way, too. It now regularly hosts Late Night Movie on Friday and Saturday nights, with twitter links being sent out to a list of regulars, and weekends have become a marvelous chat party with friends popping in and out and having a ball. A few other content contributors have come on board, as well, so I no longer feel like I'm running up and down empty hallways sliding in my sox, lol.
I feel like I have been blessed with friends multiplying exponentially in all directions, and I'm finally in a place in my life and my head where I can truly appreciate that. Whereas several years ago I could barely handle interacting with one fandom at a time, I now network in a new way with multiple fandoms, and talk to fans and professionals in several entertainment fields. I intend for SyfyDesigns.com to remain my main homebase come what may, my Atlantis, as it were. I think Myke has bigger plans as well, and as more time goes by, I hope to see some very exciting stuff happen for both of us.
