Intertextu-whaa?

Author: Tiara Rea

About Tiara:  Tiara grew up in St. Charles, Missouri, a small (but growing!) town just outside of St. Louis. After completing her Bachelor of Arts in English at the Honors College of Adelphi University in New York, she took the longest road trip of her life and moved to California (much to her mother’s dismay), where she’s currently enjoying the strange, sunny winter. Considering herself a writer, poet, and musician, Tiara wears many hats in her spear time. Recently, she won some awesome awards in New York for her poetry and playwriting, has completed the first major draft of her first novel, In Jesus’ Name, and fronts the band Me & Mildred Against the World. A geek at heart, Tiara also knits and can quote Back to the Future off the top of her head.

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Howdy everyone. My name is Tiara, and I’m the newest n00b here at Lunarpages, working in the Affiliate and Sales Departments (among other odd jobs). Amy offered me the option of writing a little somethin-somethin for her the Lunarpages blog every once in a while, and I actually have stuff on my mind, so why not blog it here, in the best lil blog evah?

It’s pretty interesting for me, coming from a background of internet g33kd0m…insofar as being online 24/7, having tons of blogs all over the internet, and acquiring 50 different AIM names because I think they’re coolz0rs like whoa. My family often tells me I spend too much time online, so imagine the look on their faces when I told them I’d be online 8 hours a day now, working for a Web Hosting company. It wasn’t pretty. ;) I think my mother may have spontaneously combusted, though it could have just been her cell phone connection…

As a writer, poet, and musician, my main goal in life is intertextuality, a term coined by the Assistant Dean of the college I recently graduated from. Intertextuality, as she once said to me, is the way literary texts intertwine with and talk to each other. It’s like trying to read Harry Potter before you know what a wizard is, and it’s also about the way Harry Potter uses source material from everything that came before it and the way I might use Harry Potter as I write as a way of connecting myself and my writing with it.

This is deep stuff, yo.

In essence, I like to think that everything we read, write, and create (every good thing, anyway) is intertwined with everything else others have already read, written, and created in the world. It’s all about community and what it takes to reach people, how we speak to each other, relate to each other, and genuinely care about each other. Intertextuality, as I apply it to everything I say and do, is about connection, the way Harry Potter wouldn’t exist without Lord of the Rings. *pushes up g33k g0ggl3s*

Anyway, what’s really cool for me right now is getting to see the dynamics of a hosting company from a behind the scenes and a n00b perspective. Working in an industry like this, it’s probably really easy to be dragged down by bottom lines, prices, fancy graphics, and overselling. I’ve only been here four weeks or so and already I can recognize what’s normal in the Hosting World and what’s a bit on the skeevy side: *cough-overselling-cough*.

Ultimately, what lasts I think are not the big fish that eat up all the little ones around them in order to gain a false sense of trust that they’re the best because of it. What lasts are the little guys who make it big but still have their little-guy values. I just saw Happy Feet, and I want to liken Lunarpages to Mumbles the Pengiun. Only we don’t mumble…but we do have happy feet!! Or at least I do…sometimes…when I’m alone…

Aside from happy feet, even and especially in the hosting world, it’s about intertextuality and the way we treat people that matters. At Lunarpages, I’ve noticed a new way of doing business – treat your customers and the people around you like family and they will, in turn, do the same for you. It’s very nearly a “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” sort of mentality, but there’s something decidedly less cliché (and skeevy?) about it here. This, above all, is what drew me to Lunarpages and what’s keeping me here for what I hope will be a long, long time. :)