My Personal Online-Offline Journey

In the early part of Y2K, I started my online journey by venturing into cyberspace for the first time.

That is where I met with my future-to-be (& now-is) husband for several months in the new millennium — emailing and instant messaging back & forth. He was located in Oklahoma, and I was in North Carolina.

We also spoke on the telephone, of course, but it was the Internet that kept us in touch on a daily basis.

Who knew I’d make such a significant human connection while being physically 500+ miles apart? (This was before Skype or any other video communications platform came on the scene.)

Eventually, he travelled across the country to meet me in person.

Then, we spent a significant amount of time in each other’s physical world before marrying in the fall of 2001.

Our first child was born in late 2003. And shortly thereafter, we moved to Virginia so that I could be closer to my family.

Since I wanted to stay home with my infant daughter to raise her myself, I turned to the Internet to work from home. And that’s where I stayed employed to this day.

A Rude Awakening in 2008

Over the next few years, I bore two more children. And in that time, I built several websites and involved myself in local politics (because my dad was involved in local politics). And that political involvement soon extended to the state & federal levels. I was all in.

But then in 2008 I experienced a rude awakening.

I began to see (a) how bad the American political system was (at all levels), (b) how corrupt the mainstream media actually was, and (c) how illegal & unjust the American justice system was.

This was at the height of my political activism and when the presidential qualification of Natural Born Citizenship captured & consumed much of my attention.

By the end of that year, I had lost all faith in our political & judicial systems and could no longer handle watching and/or listening to the mainstream media.

In my view, all of those institutions were lost causes — there was no fixing, purifying or restoring the lot of them. So, I withdrew my support and became more skeptical of all that I heard going forward.

And then I started questioning all sorts of things that didn’t make sense to me.

Critical Thinking Became the Order of the Day of my Life

During the summer of that year my husband and I attended a Freedom March in Washington DC. At the time I considered myself a freedom-loving patriot. (Today, I simply consider myself freedom-loving.)

On that occasion, the events that took place on 9/11 were called into question for me.

Someone had handed me a flyer that read, “What happened to WTC7?” And that simple question spurred me on to conduct my first deep-dive online investigation. And what I learned was shocking. I couldn’t help but talk about it with everyone I knew & interacted with.

At about the same time my husband began looking into the matter of chemtrails. He naturally shared what he was learning with me — and with everyone else around us.

Surprisingly, our friends from church (& all of my family) thought we were crazy. They called us “conspiracy theorists”, even though we were simply calling into question the official stories being disseminated through the mainstream media.

Nonetheless, we persisted in dedicating ourselves (from that year onward) to the pursuit of truth.

Questioning the Unquestionable

Then, in early 2010, a faith-based issue started bothering me, and I couldn’t let it rest.

I participated in a webinar in 2008 on “The Making of America”, which eventually led me to pay more attention to the Ten Commandments. I decided to post those commandments all throughout my house and teach them to my children.

But the fourth commandment continually stuck out to me. It addressed the keeping of the Sabbath Day, which is something I had never paid any attention to in the past.

When I began to explore that issue more in the Bible, I questioned why it was universally accepted within my circles of Christianity that only nine out of the Ten Commandments were expected to be obeyed. What about the Sabbath Day? Didn’t that matter, too?

That led me to more and more questions. But for some reason, none of my church leaders were willing to discuss any of the issues I raised in that process.

So, I kept seeking the answers out on my own.

Thus, I began to voraciously read the Bible, reading whole books at a time and marking them up with whatever came to mind.

I dove deep into studying key words in key passages using a few online resources. I’d look up their every reference throughout other parts of the Bible. And then I considered them in their immediate respective contexts, continually posing questions.

I was consumed with wanting to make sense of it all.

The people around me at church at that time didn’t know what to do with me. Yet, nobody wanted to talk to me about any of what I was tackling.

So, I turned to Facebook and started posting about all of this on there.

Finding Meaningful Connection Again…on the Internet

I welcomed (& considered) every comment made on my posts. I, of course, continued to read and study and pray about these things. But then I would also bounce what I was finding & thinking off of others online.

I always welcomed feedback (whether they were in agreement with me or not) because I was hungry to learn.

And that overall experience was amazing.

I connected with strangers from all over the world. People were relating to me and my quest, and I found it so encouraging.

Soon, however, word got back to my pastor about what was happening online. And he paid my husband and I a visit.

Apparently, my posts were causing confusion amongst members of our local church. He still wasn’t interested in talking with either of us anymore about any of those matters. Instead, we were told if I didn’t stop posting those things, I would no longer be welcome at our church.

Given that ultimatum, my husband told me to not stop posting. (Not because he didn’t want us involved with that church anymore. He just refused to have me muzzled.)

Naturally, I remained careful with what I put out there, and I continued to share what I was learning.

Eventually, the church leadership handed us a piece of paper that explained their position on the overall subject matter of “The Old Testament Law and the New Testament Believer”. I thanked them and said I looked forward to discussing what they gave me after going through it.

But I was told it was not open for discussion — that was their position, and if we didn’t agree with it, then their church was probably not the place for us.

Needless to say, we didn’t last there much longer.

A Whole Other Lifetime

The 2010s were like a whole other lifetime for me as I navigated multiple paradigm shifts.

I endured my own personal wilderness experience (in several ways) during that decade. I learned so much back then. And I experienced high highs and low lows. But it all came at a very great cost — to me and to my family.

We became socially isolated at the local level.

As a result of that physical isolation, we moved someplace new in 2019. We took on a second property in the mountains, and I threw myself into that local community.

Socially speaking, things were looking up for all of us.

Then 2020 happened, and the world-at-large was turned upside down.

Thus began what felt like a whole other lifetime — again.

While I think I was a bit more prepared for what happened that year than most, it still took me a long time to get my bearings following its wake.

Going Offline

For several years I struggled with what I should be doing with my life — specifically online.

I saw society being pushed to live nearly every facet of their lives on the Internet, and I wanted out.

Given that and my limited resources, coupled with all that I had learned and experienced since Y2K, choosing the right path weighed very heavy on me.

I personally believe living (every aspect of life) online is unhealthy and unsustainable. But I realize in this day & age, the Internet is not going away, and it is how most people connect with other people.

Of course, they largely make those connections through their smart phones. And that is one piece of technology I have intentionally avoided. However, social media also plays a huge factor in people connecting with one another.

Facebook brought a lot of amazing people into my life during the 2010s. But it also brought a lot of ruin to my life. (And that platform has changed so drastically from what it once was. I can barely stand it anymore.)

Honestly, I don’t want to engage much with any social media platform, because frankly, I’m sick & tired of sitting on my butt in front of a screen all day. I’d rather be doing other things.

So, in recent years I decided to dial things way back to the dinosaur age before Y2K — when all anyone had was an email address — and maybe a domain name to advertise an organization or business to a broader market.

And that’s where I’m at these days in my online-offline journey. I’m pursuing a more natural, human existence.

What about you? How has your online journey gone in the past 25+ years? Please get in touch with me and tell me about it. I’d love to hear from you.

Sincerely,
Carrie (not Kelly)