Actually, these days a lot of things make me feel old. Highschool graduates, classmates getting married and having kids, the fact that I need a nap everyday… But somehow, interacting with people on the internet is what really does it. The fact that a lot people in my fandoms are younger is a factor, but also thinking back on all of the new media and technology and how it’s changed is amazing is the main thing.

My family got our first computer when I was around 8 or 9. Windows 95, 255mHz processor, 6GB HD. That was also the time I learned how to make my first website, out of pure HTML in Notepad. I didn’t even know what CSS was, and I didn’t even touch Frontpage (blech) until middle school. People complain about their 10Mb cable internet, when I used to get yelled at for running the phone bill up every month with our speedy 56k modem.

When I was 10, I got into fandom, specifically Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura. I would download all the pictures I could find, but they took up too much space, so I had a huge collection of floppy disks holding them. My family couldn’t afford a color printer, so I went to friend’s house (whose parents ran a computer business) and printed my pictures out there to hang on my wall. Fanfiction back then was amazing too. I would read entire spinoff series that were professionally written. Fanfiction now? I don’t even touch it.

But perhaps the most amazing part to me is how things have changed so much, but I was never really conscious of just how much. Almost 15 years years from the first time I touched a computer (those cute old Apples), I realize I don’t remember how things changed. When did I go from a floppy to a zip drive to a CD to a dual layer DVD? A hard drive from 6GB to 2TB? When did I first touch a laptop? First write a blog? And all of this has happened in my short life span, too. And it only seems like things change faster and faster.

Thinking about it, doesn’t it make you feel old – and a little amazed – too?