Dawn enters the room with a bagel stapled to her forehead.
 
September, 1993. As a freshly squeezed, highly inquisitive, brand new freshman in college, Dawn found her way into the computer lab. Eager to see what everyone else was doing, she discovered that other students were intently staring at their black computer screens, green print flickering in their eyes, typing away furiously. Furiously chatting, actually.
 
The chat room was born. Not yet at the point where the wonderful platform of AOL would create the be-all-end-all of instant messaging, users would enter command prompts to go from one "room" to another, essentially, going from one conversation to the next. Just like today, when entering a room, the user would be announced upon entry. How did Dawn enter the room? She spontaneously typed in "with a bagel stapled to her forehead" and quickly discovered that it always made everyone in the room say hello rather quickly. "Having a bagel on my forehead," says Dawn, "is how I became known. I instantly had people recognize me when I came in. That instant connection with other people is what I always look for, what I strive for. The bagel on my head was my first interaction with that element."
 
The tie to the internet and the outside world was strong. Dawn, a creative writer at heart, discovered that the internet was a venue with which she could pour her heart and soul into, regardless whether or not there was an audience. An audience wasn’t important, she decided, but writing short stories, music, poetry, screenplays, and short videos was. With the advent of the blog, Dawn found her calling.
 
Originally in school as a Chemistry major, Dawn quickly discovered that "I was an idiot with math and would blow up humankind by accident," and so she poked around to try and figure out what it was in her life that made her want to "get up and go." She tried various aspects of writing, including broadcasting short videos from the point of view of a drug addict on YouTube. "One of my very best friends at the time was in NarcAnon and had been addicted to alcohol and drugs. I wondered what that was like. Unfortunately, I discovered something else about the internet. People take what you do and say and twist it any way that they like. I lost my zen on that one."
 
And zen is the question here. What is she talking about? "You know how when people meditate, or have a cigarette, chill, or zone out? Well, my phrase was always, ‘go find my zen.’ Same principle, really." And Dawn’s zen, as she found, was in listening to other people.
 
"People talk to me," she says. "I have no idea who they are, and they’ll sit down next to me and just start talking. I think it’s because I just sit there and listen. I am intensely interested in what other people have to say. Sometime in 2007 I finally realized that I was a reporter at heart. I wanted to listen to other people, and then write about it. I mean, what else do reporters do?"
 
Essentially, discovering that her love of writing could be beneficial to others really made her life worth living. "Being a reporter is like being half witness, half counselor. People talk to you, pour out their hearts and souls, and you listen like some sort of misery sponge, soaking it all up, ready to squeeze your own soul later and let some of it back out for others to see. You feel intensely connected and yet completely not a part of their life. It's weird."
 
Occasionally, things in internet-land aren’t exactly in the zen atmosphere, and that’s when Dawn has been known to pull backwards and not post. "It hurts me, sometimes, that people can be so hateful toward each other. It especially hurts me when things are taken out of context, mis-attributed, or even straight made up. As a journalist, my biggest fear in life is to misquote someone. Not everyone else has that same fear, apparently." She pauses for a moment, reflecting on early 2007. "The internet makes it possible to pretend to be someone else," she says carefully. "The veil of anonymity makes it easy. And that makes it dangerous. To say that last year wasn’t zen for me, well, that’s an understatement."
 
As a reporter, Dawn is in the public eye to stay. "David Lightman said that when he became a reporter, he didn’t want to be famous, he wanted to be respected. I’d say that the biggest path to respect, is trust." She swirls her decaf. "After 2007, I decided that I’d wouldn’t post or comment on other people’s sites. There are too many fakers and haters out there. If you ever see comments with my name on it, that’s not me," she says, taking a slow sip. "I am Zen-Bagelistic, and that’s all there is."

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