Monday, February 4, 2013

THERE`S NO PLACE LIKE BAW!




          Hello dear friends, old and new!

         I have finally returned to my main blog to continue writing about this Digital Sea journey. The first thing I must say is that  everything is so different from last year, when everything was launched. At the beginning, and good way through the course, I was totally bewildered in an unfamiliar environment, struggling to understand the simplest instructions! As I said, I felt like Alice in Wonderland. This time I don't wonder around strange forests following ambiguous messages (NB all the messages last year  were extremely clear and informative, but when they were decoded by my ignorance a lot was lost in translation). The time has come  to change the film, and the title and picture  make it easy to guess  which film I've switched to.

        Yes, it is  the wonderful Wizard of Oz! Indeed there are a few similarities and a lot of magic here. Like Dorothy, I have my yellow brick road to follow, accompanied by so many dear people along the way. We  are travelling  together, supporting  and encouraging each other. This paved way is leading us, not to the Wizard, but to a different kind of magic, the magic of spaces and links. Like Dorothy, we have our good fairies, dear mods, who appear in the times of troubles to lead us back to the right way.

        And that`s exactly why BaW is different from any other place. Here we are in this beautiful big family, where everybody is doing their best to help you, guide you, not to let you give up. You are given enormous amounts of positive energy, Here sharing and caring are so genuine that it is impossible to be indifferent..Here you feel protected from dangerous sites and serious mistakes. Before, when I got a message about a potentially dangerous site, I immediately retreated to the safety of not doing anything. Now when I see a message about a risk to my computer asking me if I want to go on, I just think to myself: `Of course, I`ll go on where my Baw freinds go`. I feel safe to go into some side lanes, do what I need to do and return to the yellow brick road.    

        To be completely honest, I must say one more thing.. It's not that I don't like being confident, knowing  what one should now. But somehow I miss the mystery of  my first days here.I feel nostalgic about BaW12. I miss the late night talks with Catherine, our struggle to hit the right key. I miss direct tweets to Natasa at 3 am. asking her what URL  or embed code is or something of that type and I miss her immediate retweets. Naturally,  Baw12 will always be a very special for me, because that`s when a whole new world opened  before me. And that, in itself, is a miracle.
       Do you remember the song Dorothy sings in the film? I have just realized something: that place over the rainbow can so very easily be our BaW!