rayanne langdon dotcom

Happy Birthday, Angel

Today is Seb’s 22 birthday. He’s celebrating it in Heaven.

His final LiveJournal posts reads:

4/6th of radiation treatement done.
2 more treatements tomorrow.
7:15 before last radiation
16:45 last radiation
24:00 bone marrow transplant

wish me luck, I guess.
so far, so good.

minus the scariest nose bleed happening last night.
it just wouldn’t stop.
3 hours of waterfalling-esque nose bleeding

hope it doesnt happen again, scary stuff.

no visitors for the next 2-3 weeks.
not like I was getting any anyways.
except from sarah, cause she’s radical.
and amanda, because she’s cool.

I never met Seb. We went to a lot of the same shows and I always saw him around town. We were both invited to the same MSN group conversations. I became his MySpace friend and added him to LiveJournal.

He had Leukemia, but was mostly healthy for the first couple years I knew him. Then his LJ posts got sad and scary. He was hospitalized and he was really sick. His friends visited him in the hospital and had PlayStation parties.

He had a beautiful girlfriend. I never met her. I didn’t even see her in person. But, I followed everything about them from PunkOttawa.com (a big deal forum in the Ottawa music scene), their MySpace pages and LJs.

One day, he made a post about deleting many of his LJ friends because it was too hard to read the silly teenage ramblings of emo kids (description mine, not his) when he was going through so much. He got rid of IRL friends, but he kept me. I was so incredibly touched.

He passed away almost three years ago on April 30, 2006. He had just turned 19. His mom and little brother signed up to PunkOttawa to be part of what Seb’s life was. His mom made a MySpace page so she could keep in touch with his friends and leave comments on her son’s page.

His friends still leave comments for him all the time. They tell him what’s new in their lives and say they miss him.

I had never been more upset about someone passing away. It was so tragic. I spent so much time trying to feel what his family and girlfriend were feeling. They were so strong. Stronger than I’m even being right now.

We never really had any mutual friends, so no one knows how much his time with us means to me.

Years ago, I wrote to a boy in Indiana and he wrote me back. This went on for a couple years and I always thought I was in love with him. I compiled and edited all our notes to each other and changed all the characters’ names. I am Sarah (Seb’s once girlfriend) and the Indiana boy is Seb. The name of the book is Sarah and Sebastian. If I ever do anything significant with it, I can’t wait to tell Sarah my story.

I just checked my LJ account, noticed today is his birthday and wanted to tell this story.

Being nerdly for charity

With mesh 2009 (Canada’s Web Conference) approaching, It seems like a more timely time (hah) than most to think about the whole social movement to… well… be a better person.

I visited New York (yes folks, the very city Frank Sinatra crooned about!) this weekend and spent some time at the Social Media for Social Change event to support City Harvest and feed more NYC mouths. A ton of people came out with good motives in mind, and all just hours before my loves back home (that’s currently Toronto, for those not in the know) killed (that’s a good thing this time!) Pay It Backward Day.

Congrats to everyone who had anything to do with rallying do-gooders to do good by buying a coffee for one another this Saturday, April 04, 2009. At my last count, there were over 600 acts of kindness that lead to a great donation to the SickKids Foundation. Hella cool, boys and girls.

Sidebar: I’m so happy this was a Second Cup-sponsored event! I’m proud of the little (not so little) coffee shop I spent so much time working at in university : )

So anyway, why do I bring up mesh? Well, other than the fact that I’m mega amped to be an attendee for the second year in a row (though only partial; I’ll see y’all on Wednesday!) — and even more than the whole my-fearless-leader-is-a-co-founder thing — my dear friends Sarah Prevette and Duarte Da Silva (swoon — and I do mean both of them!) are participating in a discussion called Using Social Media for Social Good.

Sarah and Duarte are going to talk about being part of other nerdly events (specifically TwestivalTO and HoHoTO) that had a goal to raise money for charitable causes (charity : water and The Toronto Daily Bread Food Bank). They’re smart. You should go see for yourself.

In closing (I stole that one from Saul Colt), I like parentheses! No way, that’s not it. Hope to see some of you at mesh this week and keep doing good things for good reasons! That’s better.

Now you can stalk me IRL, too!

I like to be social. Sometimes I’m more awkward than social, but hey, I gallyvant regardless! Here are some of my upcoming whereabouts:

FUTURE

11/16/09: StayFresh 14 (Toronto)

11/18/09: SproutUpTO (Toronto)

11/30/09: Freelance Creatives in Toronto Meetup (Toronto)

12/01/09: Third Tuesday Toronto (Toronto)

12/03/09: DemoCamp Toronto 24 w/ Gary Vee (Toronto)

12/08/09: FreshBooks’ Building a Web App Biz Workshop (Chicago)

12:18/09: BTW — Birthday Three Way (Toronto)

PAST

04/14/09: FreshBooks’ Building a Web App Biz Workhop (Toronto)

04/18/09: DiveBrunch (Toronto)

04/18/09: electric circuits (Toronto)

04/21/09 to 04/24/09: Live Virtual Assistants Summit (Montreal)

06/03/09 to 06/07/09: Forum on Virtual Assistance (Niagara Falls)

Oh yeah, I totally miss stuff all the time because I can be blog lazy. Oops!

I like e-mail!

Want to get in touch? Cool! I’m all over the Internet — usually as rlangdon.

And what’s second best to receiving letters in the mail? Well, other than being kissed on the cheek by a handsome gentleman, getting nice notes electronically, of course! I can be reached at: rayannelangdon @ gmail.com (remove the spaces, obvs.!).

Rayanne? Who?

Hey, I’m Rayanne Langdon! Thanks for stopping by. My two favourite things in the world (other than my family and friends) are music and the Internet, so that’s what I’m here to write about.

I also like my life a lot and think I’m really awesome, so I might throw some of that in there, too.

I’m the Queen of Hearts at FreshBooks, the super-cool Toronto-based (leaders in!) online invoicing, time tracking and expense tracking service.

When I’m not visiting amazing cities for conferences and other work-related funstuffs, my job keeps me online much of the time. And at the end of each day, I put my MacBook down only to visit the little marketers’ room.

I play guitar badly, sing moderately well and tweet like it’s going out of style — It won’t!

I like following CP Style, buying sharpies and typing the word “srsly.”

Let’s be friends, K?

Photo by my hero in capturing sweet moments, Rannie Turingan.