First Post - Introduction

Hello, SpaceHey!

This is exciting! I’m on some modern social media platforms, but it’s nice to be here because of the 2000s vibes. Before I get into blogging, I thought it’d be a good idea to introduce myself.

So, hi! I’m Nicole, but online, I’ve also been known as ROHM—short for *Riddle On Her Mind.*

ROHM is the name of my visual archive that I started in July 2020, but the story actually begins a bit earlier, in March of that year. An article popped up on ETCanada.com asking whether Lance Bass’s career goals outside of *NSYNC might’ve been what caused the group’s breakup. As a longtime Lance girlie I took major offense. BIG TIME. The article didn’t seem fully accurate, but I couldn’t quite pinpoint where it went wrong. Like most *NSYNC fans, I didn’t have a complete picture of what happened back then. All I knew was that in 2002, they went on a “break,” and despite everyone calling it a hiatus for years, nothing came of it beyond occasional one-off appearances since their last album in 2001.

I ended up talking about the article with a group of fellow *NSYNC fans, which turned into quite the debate. But rather than leave it at that, I made up my mind to dig deeper. I decided to comb through everything I could find about *NSYNC in the early 2000s to piece together the story of how the band came to an end. By June, I had a decent amount of information—articles, videos, fan sites, you name it—but then I hit a wall. What should I do with all this stuff? Most people don’t have the patience to sift through pages of archives or spend hours reading old news. That’s when I decided to create a **visual archive**. I wanted to share what I’d uncovered but in a way that was quick and easy for people to grasp— pulling out the relevant points without overwhelming people.

Now, here’s the catch: I can draw, but I'm not an artist and I'm not a graphic designer (at least I wasn’t). I’d never done any digital art before. But I wasn’t going to let that stop me. So, I downloaded GIMP, practiced a bit, and took a leap of faith. My crummy little drawings became my first Instagram posts for *Riddle On Her Mind,* uploaded on July 11, 2020. Fast forward four and a half years and 37 posts later  and I’m still going - with more to share!

I’ve got backups of my archive on Wordpress, LiveJournal, and Tumblr. To some people, this might seem like overkill, but if this passion project has shown me anything it's that the internet is NOT forever. Content gets edited or deleted before they could be archived, leaving behind lost stories and information. That’s why I’m glad I’ve been able to preserve and share what I’ve found.

Now, I’m also using this blog as a backup, but it’s more than that. It’s a place where I can talk about my work and connect with others. I’m hoping to meet fellow nostalgia hunters who are diving deep into their own research projects. The sense of community here on SpaceHey is great, and I can’t wait to link up with like-minded people!

That’s all for now—catch y'all in the next post!