The Wiles of the Web

Hello, my name is Sista Cala and I am an Internet junkie. I just don't know how I got so out of control. It all started with needing an email account at work. Then my job made it mandatory to complete on-line continuing education. Various committees decided to use email instead of actually having meetings. This was to cut down on wasted time. ha, ha.

Somewhere along the way, my sister Cyn encouraged me to start a blog. I pondered for days about what to name it, what I wanted to post, and how to get my thoughts from paper to screen. Blogger made that easy for me; and the rest is history.

From blogspot to bloglines, I needed a streamlined way to manage all of the blogs I wanted to read. Bloglines has a function called "clip blog" that made it so easy to save little snippets that I thought might be useful later on. Soon I had a mountain of snippets and little way to catalog them.

One day while teaching Sunday School, I made reference to something that I had read in a blog somewhere around here. Opened a can of worms indeed. My pastor decided that I must be a computer guru or something, so he put me to work on the church website. It started simple with a couple of pages and now it is about a dozen.

Requests came pouring in for info about our ministry. How could we get some samples out to the masses. Eureka........YouTube, GodTube, e-zekiel.tv, ShoutLife. Being the 'net-queen began to consume more and more time. Then the teens asked why we didn't have a MySpace. I said that I had no time to work it. Oh some of them could have set it up for Pastor, but they couldn't be trusted to keep it squeaky clean.....you know what I mean? Long story short; we now have a MySpace page. I tinker with it some, but get this......it has worked its magic on my pastor and I think he's got a hundred friends or more.

It is not enough that I've got all these sites setup and running for the church, I have my own personal pages too. Actually mine came first. I used them as beta-sites for me to learn the ropes. So much work, seems like a waste to terminate them as I plod the steps of sobriety. Alas, I have all but stopped posting here, have given a notice on ShoutLife, doing very little on MySpace, e-zekiel.tv, and GodTube (now tangle.com) but still keeping both YouTube accounts renewed weekly.

God is so good. He has spared me from withdrawal symptoms. So far. But then again, I didn't/haven't quit cold turkey. Actually, I have found the methadone of the 'net world.....Facebook. It is a little user un-friendly at times, but it offers means of blogging, networking, and IM all rolled up together. It has become my latest hangout. I can't barely go a day without logging in to see what long lost friend has found me.

It is going to take more than a 12 step program to free me from that one. Perhaps down the line I will get back to some serious posting. I still have tons of material that I could post; but for now you can catch up with my archives all over the 'net ( if all of these links are intact). See you around. If you're ever in the Facebook neighborhood, look me up (enter sistacala@juno.com )in the friend-finder box and we'll have a little chat.