A new year. A new start. And just a chance to abuse the phrase “See you next year!” It’s hard to get tired of using it once every 365.24 days.
So, I have decided to open up my other blog to people.
There are a few reasons for not doing so previously. Firstly, there’s a lot of silly writing with unexplained LOLs and exclamations all over the place in the archives, not to mention the countless other sorts of weirdness linked to the handle I’m using here that’s spread over the rest of the interwebz. But I like to keep old stuff as some kind of record that my past self existed, and I’ve given up being embarrassed about them. And anyway, now and then I’m still performing embarrassing acts that outstrips any of this stuff by miles.
When I was thirteen*, the world was a different place to me. I imagined thousands of creepy people staring at computer screens out there, waiting to kidnap children and sell them to clients halfway across the globe the instant they figured out their addresses and statuses as minors. I don’t blame that old me; there has been at least one computer class devoted to videos of this type.
There’s a complex continuum of privacy and anonymity with a fine line of acceptability. On one extreme end there’s paranoid people who use randomly-generated one-use throwaway accounts and proxy-bouncing through servers in Tahiti, Ukraine, Venezuela, Wales, darn there isn’t a place name that starts with X, you get the picture. On the other extreme end there’s people who use Facebook on unsecured public wi-fi with the password “password” and most of their thousands of friends made for the exclusive purpose of some idle, badly-designed Flash game. Somewhere in the middle is the fuzzy line of rational acceptability.
I’ve been on the paranoid side for years now, but moving closer to the line all the time, because it turns out being paranoid is boring. Of course, I’m still not going to post my address or passport ID here, but there is still a lot of not-so-impersonal info out there that you can now find.
There’s another reason, which was I wanted to give myself some time to see if I actually had enough interesting content to blog about now. I really don’t want to restart this thing for the umpteenth time and lapse into “I should blog more” posts again. Well, I think I’ve succeeded on this front, although I don’t know if it’s actually interesting to read for anybody else.
The year has gone by fast. It really does seem like time goes by faster the older you get. And it feels like another opportunity to start things over, reach new heights, break your own expectations, and accidentally write the day and month with 2011 in all sorts of embarrassing places. Soon winter vacation will be upon us, followed by the olympiad season. And life goes on. Sometimes, from a faraway vantage point, the largeness of it all is just overwhelming. Sigh.
Anyway, as a reward for reading that (or just, I don’t know, scrolling down here), have another Slitherlink. Happy New Year!