We first got internet access back in 1996, when I was in Year 10 at school. We’d had a computer since the mid-eighties, and I’d always loved playing games on there. So, when we got connected, it was a whole new playground - and one I took to with gusto!

I used it for school, but, like most people, also to learn more about my passion. “And what was that” I hear you ask? It was The X-Files. Without fail, on a Wednesday night at 8:30, you would find me in my dark room, watching the latest episode on my own little TV. I wanted to date Mulder, and I wanted to be Scully. In short - I loved it!

So, I explored around and found a lot of like-minded people. One type of site I particularly liked were the ‘member’ ones - where you could join and celebrate your fetish with others. I joined a few, and then I decided - hey, why not make my own?

So I did. It was called The Loyal Order of G-Woman and Men Devoted to the Worship of Scully and Mulder… (deep breath)…. or TLOGWMDWSM. I had hours of fun finding pictures to put up, organising the page layout, finding/writing content, and teaching myself HTML by writing everything I needed and learnt into a little purple spiral-bound notebook. I still have that book somewhere!

And, after a few weeks, something started happening. People started visiting, and even more exciting, they started joining! You see, I had a ‘join’ page where you could e-mail me and become a G-Woman or G-Man. The e-mails started trickling in, then flooding in. I ran a competition amongst my subscribers to write the motto for the site, I got complements on how cool it was, and I enjoyed myself.

After a while, the e-mails became a bit much, and I stopped adding new people - this was in the days before I knew about auto-responders and auto-lists. My interest in the show also waned, and so I left the site alone more and more often. I would check it now and again to see the visitor numbers which, from memory, got up into at least the hundreds of thousands.

I made another site at the same time, which was a homage to all my favourite TV shows. Things like The Pretender, Xena - Warrior Princess. I paid for hosting on this one, and it was great fun, too.

But then I grew up, and left them behind. I really wish now that I’d kept an copy of TLOGWMDWSM on my hard drive - but it’s now lost to the mists of time, as far as I know.

Something this early history taught me is that you should focus on the things you love - because that will motivate you and keep you going. So if you’re planning on starting a blog - start with your passions. Once you find something you want to tell the world about, half the battle is won.