gsnedders

Extracts from interview "gsnedders by gsnedders", dated November 2007.

What's caused the biggest change in yourself in the past year?

In all honestly, most likely trying to pull myself back together after attempting to commit suicide, and really trying (and at times, being forced) to move on from things that have troubled me in the past.

Suicide? Troubles?

I've spent my entire life being lied to and screwed over, resulting in me trusting very few people. As of May this year, I truly trusted an entire two people. One of them lied to me. This left me not only feeling unable to trust anyone (since that happened, I've never truly opened up about anything to anyone), but also made me realise quite how weak I was (and still am) due to what he lied to me about — asking a girl out (trying to persuade me to do so, despite me being too cowardly to do so).

Also, in the past, I've been bullied a lot, which ended up with me almost believing how worthless I was (the final thing that made me believe that I am worthless was my weakness that was finally fully shown to me by the above lie).

Why not ask her out? Surely you'd feel great if you could overcome your weaknesses?

I most likely would feel great if I could overcome them, but I truly am very shy and very cowardly. I'm paranoid of almost any consequence of anything. I've just been screwed over one too many times.

And why would anyone bully you anyway?

I got called various things endlessly in the past, ranging from any number of insults caused by me having had boyfriends (and therefore being called gay, even though I am in fact bi), to being insulted due to being (apparently) clever.

Going back to your paranoia, can you (briefly) say what you are scared of?

Probably above all being bullied again, and anything that might cause that. Another thing that scares me is the identify of who I fancy getting out — love (and lust) has a habit of embarrassing me very easily. I'm not so much scared of the person in question finding out, but rather others finding out and being mean to me about it, for whatever reason.

Regardless of your paranoia, you seem to blog a lot about your lust-life. Is there any reason for this? How come you have a blog at all?

My habit for blogging things related to lust is more derived from my desire to get it off my chest, stop feeling as if I'm having to keep it all inside, and not let anyone know anything.

As for keeping a blog at all, it is something that I had done previously, yet failed. Why did I start again? I felt as if I had enough to say about something (though mainly related to web development) to keep a blog. As it happened, the main subject matter of my blog in many ways turned away from web development to my lust life. There again, why did I start at all? I started because all my (web development) peers all had blogs, and managed to say incredibly awesome things. I started one in hope that one day I could say something awesome too. As far as I can tell (though some might disagree), that day has not yet come.

Can you give a brief summary of this lust?

Well, if we go back to 2006 (the majority of the events before this are irrelevant), I ended up fancying a girl at school (though the reasons why aren't important), after which various things involving her happened to me, before she ended up hating me (slightly under a year after I started fancying her) for reasons which to this day I do not fully understand.

After that, it took me a while for me to pull myself back together, giving me very little faith in my ability to tell what girls feel towards me, and what causes those feelings to change. Having spent almost an entire month having very few feelings towards anyone, I finally felt strong enough to try my hopes again, though I remained very secretive about who it was.

Early 2007? How does this correspond to the above lie?

I already had my suspicions that she hated me, but what she actually said (as opposed to the lie) made is plainly obvious that she did.

Returning to your blog, how come someone who is just fifteen has anything to do with web development?

When I was first allowed to use the internet by my parents, in around 1999 (when I was seven), I thought it was amazingly awesome. I could tell that it was something that would change everything, no matter how minor the thing in question was. By early 2003 I had my own website (albeit one made with predesigned templates), by mid 2003 it had been redone using the 30 day free trial of Dreamweaver, and by the end of 2003 I had been grabbed by standarditis. Over the next several years I went through various things, eventually leading to me doing less and less actual development, and more and more work on standards — I'm now acknowledged in WHATWG/W3C's HTML 5, a contributor to the RSS Advisory Board's RSS Profile, and the editor of the (as of yet unpublished and incomplete) HTTP Parsing specification.

What web development projects have you been involved in?

The most notable project I've been really heavily involved in would most likely be SimplePie, though I've worked on plenty of other projects over the years, albeit mostly libraries that aren't that well known. Other (somewhat) notable projects for which I am credited as contributing to include BZflag, the mainly dead php-html5lib, and the totally dead Tarzan.

One final question, if I may, where did you get the idea to interview yourself?

In the Snakes & Arrows Tour Programme (Rush's latest tour) each of the three band members has a short section to write about themselves. Alex Lifeson has an interview entitled "Alex by Alex" which is far less serious than this.

Thanks for your time, it's been a pleasure talking to you.

No, the pleasure has been mine!