I have had

• my own computer since I was in first grade
• glasses since 6th grade
• my cats since I was 14
• a brother since I was 14
• a cell phone since I was 15
• a car since I was 16
• a friendster, myspace, facebook, flixster, friendfeed, delicious, digg, stumbleupon, twitter (you get the point) account since the day after their respective launches
• a very small half of a dorm room since I was 18
• a tiny room in an apartment full of girls since I was 20
• a business card with my name on since sometime in 2004
• a blog since 2007
• my very own apartment since July of 2008

and some how, in all of that, I never thought that it would be necessary to have my own domain name. I’ve registered, setup, designed and maintained many domains in the past 5 years. And somehow this is the first time I’ve decided to have my own.

I’ve been blogging and guest blogging for quite some time so some may wonder why on earth does this girl really need another domain. Well, I’ll tell ya, that’s quite an easy question to answer. I very much believe that this whole internet/social media world is all about building relationships. The first step to building said relationships is to be REAL. That’s not really a hard thing for me. But I have put myself into a few boxes (gen y blogger, designer & small business marketing person) and the problem with boxes is sometimes things don’t fit in any of the boxes. So I created this place … my very own domain … to be just that – my very own place. I’ve been wanting to blog about sxsw since I came back a month ago but I couldn’t figure out if I wanted to do recaps and try to put the 20something spin on it or if I wanted to spin it all as designery/small business advice and the truth is I don’t want to do either with some topics.

So what can you expect from my very colorful corner of the web? Complete and utter randomness that comes to me. Based on what I know about myself and what I’ve been wanting to blog about but felt like I had no outlet (I like run on sentences!) I think it would be safe to guess: books I’m reading (or listening to), songs I’m listening to/inspired by, websites I’ve found that are fun/ugly/useful/ridiculous, goals, ideas, and stories & lessons I’ve learned from awesome people I’ve met.

I’m not the first in my little community on the web to have this bright idea – Ryan & Holly both decided to get their very own domain name, in addition to what they were already doing (mostly because they rock!).

What do you think of my crazy idea? Actually scratch that – what kinda randomness would you like elysa to say next …