From misfit to Miss popular

By Mary Elizabeth Williams

I got on the Well at the same time I began my freelance writing career, as a panacea for the loneliness and isolation of working at home. I liked my new career but missed the social aspects of a "regular job," the daily chit-chat about movies or current events that broke up the day. I turned to the Well to be my virtual water cooler, but it soon turned into something else entirely -- it became a way of life.

Joining the Well gave me the same feeling I'd had years before, when I'd first gone away to college. Suddenly I wasn't the misfit chick any more, as I'd been in the corporate world or in high school. Now I was part of a group that shared my sensibility, my sense of humor, even my obscure pop-culture references. I logged on religiously throughout the day, posting my opinions, cracking one-liners and discovering, to my delight, that people were actually reading and responding to what I had to say. It was intoxicating and addictive.

I knew I'd truly arrived the day I logged on and saw a new discussion called "Ask Mary Beth." It was a goofy little outpost for ersatz sex advice, but it gave me something to write every day and it was an oasis of acceptance in my morass of rejection slips.

I liked hanging out online so much it wasn't long before I graduated from casual poster to a regular and vocal presence to full-fledged community host. And being a host on the Well led to becoming, in 1995, the host of the interactive area of a start-up called Salon.

I got my first byline in the New York Times because someone I knew from the Well hooked me up with an editor there. I got in the Nation the same way. I lived in Boston for two-and-a-half years in part because a pal from the Well who lived there convinced me it was an OK place to reside. I had hoped the Well would provide a social supplement to my work week, a place to goof off. And it was. That it also turned to out to be a resource for picking up work was an unexpected perk.

I'd only been on the Well a few weeks when I went to my first face-to-face event, and there I met the woman who would become not only one of my best friends, but the godmother of my child. The Well flavors our whole friendship. She comes over to coo at the baby, and we wind up gossiping about what we've read that day online. Or she'll be on a business trip and I'll be housebound with diaper duty, and we'll wind up online at the same time, volleying tales of work and motherhood back and forth as fast as our fingers can fly. And I've made other friends along the way, some who live on the other side of the country and one who lives two blocks away, and I'd never have known any of them had we not first connected on the Well.

Some people claim that life online is no life at all, that the Internet isolates us from human contact. But isolation is exactly what the Well saved me from. At a time in my life when I felt directionless and alone, I found a place I could talk about my family, I could get career advice, I could report on how I'd dressed in the '80s or what I'd eaten for lunch. I found the milestones and the day-to-day. I found home.

About the writer
Mary Elizabeth Williams is the host of Salon Table Talk.

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