Welcome to Winsonline

My name is Winson, but most of my friends call me Wins. So by logic, winsonline is a weblog of my life online.

10 years in 10 paragraphs

          My life online started as of January 31, 1999, just about ten years ago. It was in a time when being on the Internet was an isolated activity, before there were anything called weblogs and definitely not social networking. I was by myself, online and off.

          I was also coming out as a gay teenager then, an act so scary and confusing that I went on by the alias of Michael. I utilised the Internet as an open canvas, publishing and confirming my thoughts and idea with every word written down through an online journal in GeoCities, named Michael’s Closeted Page.

          Slowly came the assurance and Michael finally came out as Winson with the revamped website called Winson’s Life. The name was a representation of my college years at RIT as the website became more about my life in college, academically and emotionally. Through being an RA, i used the same name for a two-hour educational programme focusing on race and LGBT issues for an audience of three hundred, promoting that everyone has his/her story, this is merely my version of it.

          In the winter of 2003, my mom developed a sudden case of depressive psychosis, and after months of stagnant progress she was sent to a hospital in Hong Kong for treatment. This has greatly affected me, and within months after my college graduation in 2004 my father and I relocated to Hong Kong as well.

          With my mother being in the hospital, not knowing what to do after graduation, all whilst being in a foreign land i know close to nothing about, i dove into depression. With no friends in the first twelve months, i started relying on books and music for company, and began focusing on the microscopic things in life. Instead of noticing the traffic light, i would be noticing the number of times the green traffic light would flash before turning to red. With that, Underneath the Microbeats was born.

          With Underneath the Microbeats, the journal had gradually shifted away from daily happenings and toward personal emotions. I stopped posting on the daily happening in my life and instead describing, in painful details, the effect any given incident had on me. Technology wise, it finally made the jump to the ubiquitous weblog format, then powered by LiveJournal.

          It wasn’t until my decision to return to San Francisco in 2006 did i realise how i had socially reverted back into the closet. No matter how punch-drunk love i was with Hong Kong, underneath it all I missed the openness and transparency from my college days.

          And it was really the second try in San Francisco that had sculpted me into the current version of winsonline, proudly powered by WordPress.com. Slowly i became comfortable with myself, reunited with my long lost friends whilst making new ones, was i able to branch out into the other aspects of my life. No longer stressed about coming out or my schoolling or my mother was I able to focus on my own life.

          No longer uncertain, i’m proud that my ideas are no longer posted through aliases or in microscopic personal details, but through all the things i love in life: photography, cooking recipes, videos and short stories; I am harvesting in life through these compilations of myself.

          And with that I humbly welcome you to winsonline, and here’s to the next ten years.

Love Wins