In other news…

This has been a strange week. The reason being that I’m feeling a little… exposed, and I can’t decide if it’s good.

The internet is a weird place for someone like me. I’m one of those quiet, introverted nerds who is pretty much invisible in the world he inhabits. Sure, I’ve got people who know me and care about me, and I hope that overall, I don’t run through this world causing too much strife. That’s not the problem I have though. The problem is that there’s something about my makeup with regard to my accomplishments that first off prefers the negative (i.e., believing my accomplishments or works are useless, irrelevant, or worse–damaging) and second, is traditionally measured through external validation.

To be clear, I get a lot of ego mileage out of people telling me they like me or my work, in no small part because I can then point to something that says, “yeah, see you dork? Your stuff really is okay, in spite of your negative internal dialogue!” It’s part of the reason I love to put stuff up on Flickr. I like to get those comments that say “hey, great work”. It’s also part of the reason I was on the air on CKMS for a decade. I liked getting callers who requested songs, or who called us up to tell us that we were entertaining. I guess maybe that in itself isn’t all that unusual, either. Perhaps the only slightly unusual thing is that having the internet out there to put my various thoughts and accomplishments up is great for me because I wouldn’t otherwise have any mechanism for this external validation thingee. Or, at least, not one so broad-reaching.

So it’s been a good ego week from that perspective:

• One of my photos was used on the mnn (which I discovered entirely by fluke off of Google’s “health” pages. Yep–that’s my hand after a cold winter shoot, if I recall correctly. I really need to drink more water).
• I was named in a complementary article about my radio work in the local papers.
• Roger Ebert saw fit to acknowledge a comment I left on his blog (although I honestly don’t know what he meant by his single word response–I just like to think that out of nearly 400 comments, he chose to at least say something on mine which is no small thing).

All these things are way cool, and I don’t mind them being out there. I have no issue with any of it. The whole thing got me thinking about just how out there I really am. It had been a while since I googled myself. I was sorta shocked at how much stuff comes up now that wasn’t ever there before. Where you used to just get a couple old STC articles and photography works, now you get my google profile, my linkedIn profile, my Lulu store front, my twitter feed, info about my short stint drumming, and probably most disturbingly, this blog.

I was always a little leery of posting my full name on this blog. It isn’t because I didn’t want people to read it. If I didn’t want that, I wouldn’t post stuff. I have a paper and ink journal for all my thoughts that I don’t want available to literally the world. It’s more because I’m concerned of what some select people might think upon reading it. Like, what if my mom ever learned to google me? How about anyone who was considering me for a volunteer position, or maybe even a ‘real’ job? I know there’s nothing all that risqué going on here, but it’s giving someone information to form an opinion about me without meeting me, and some folks mistakenly and automatically take a person’s online persona as the sum total of their makeup–particularly, I fear, with blogs like this one where I often write what I think in a balls-hanging-out sort of way. I could easily be considered too opinionated or too negative and be discarded outright when in fact that writing was just what I was feeling at the time.

I’m a big boy, and I know the dangers of posting to the net. I probably wouldn’t post at all if I didn’t have that external validation thingee going on. The net is dangerous because it doesn’t ever seem to forget, and google is getting better and better at finding, indexing, and CACHEING friggin’ everything. Heck, the wayback machine’s got some stuff that even *I* forgot was up here.

I’m sort of on the fence. To post, or not to post. And if I do, what to post? What’s safe? I used to think I knew, but when I look back at some of the things I thought were safe, I’m not sure that I could honestly say that it was okay with me for EVERYONE to be able to see it.

That’s the trouble with me and my internet content. I think I’m pretty unimportant, and I can bounce around all I like with my hair on fire, and no one will care. So, I often do, just because I find being silly or opinionated suits me at the time. Then I’m astounded when someone actually DOES lift the blind and look in.

Heh. Perhaps I’m just a fool after all, and always will be. Take me or leave me.