This year was the 20th anniversary of Dark Side of the Net. (That makes me feel super old!) It started off as a little email newsletter, covering the handful of gopher and FTP sites, Usenet newsgroups, and listserv mailing lists that existed for goths at the time. (There wasn't a Web yet!)
When I started Dark Side of the Net, I lived in a painfully boring small town, far from my friends, so I had tons of time to spend building the database, adding and researching new links. Now, 20 years later, I live in the suburbs of Seattle, busy with a full time job, a small business, four foster kids, two dogs and a cat, and a busy social circle. I don't have as much time to devote to my favorite hobby, Darklinks, as I used to, and it shows in the lack of updates.
Lacking alone time, quiet and privacy to write and research, I think often of Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own."
As 2013 began, I was full of plans of ways to celebrate the 20th anniversary (and forget that this now means I'm an eldergoth in my mid 40s!)
I suffer from a bit of telephone anxiety, so my brief notion to throw a 20th anniversary party for Dark Side of the Net at some club or restaurant here in Seattle seemed like it would be difficult to arrange. (Also a bit self congratulatory, yuck). Maybe I will have conquered my anxiety in time for the 25th anniversary in five years - let's have a party!
So instead, I celebrated by opening Dark Side University, a project I've been dreaming about attempting for the past 10 years. It's still in beta, and I'm hoping to somehow carve out the time to devote to it regularly, as I'm really passionate about it.
I'm looking forward to all the new dark blogs, websites, bands, dark artists, and shops that will appear in 2014 for us to explore and enjoy together!
Happy New Year!!
--Carrie Carolin