Original Starting Post

It's somewhat of a tradition, now. When I started blogging, 2.5 years ago, I wrote this post, and I think it's worth a re-print.

First entry in the online-journal world. I swore I'd never do this, that it was the last word in self-worship, that no one cared about my mental state, and even if they did, that it was better to remain an enigma, etc, etc. Yet here I am. Possibly because I realized, recently, how angry I was that a friend of mine (Eli, you know who you are) simply left his AIM away message as "I am away from my computer right now".

What? No pithy statement on society or compact statement of your feelings? No play-by-play schedule of the next four hours of your life? How am I supposed to stalk you?

And that got me started thinking about how, these days, people are ASKING to be stalked; they put their cell numbers on their Away messages and their IM names on their webpages. Anyone trolling the web could find your phone number and call you, just for kicks, and you couldn't really object (except on the law of common sense, which, ironically, appears to be lacking in every American court) because you had put all that info on the net in the first place. Is this where we, as a society, are headed?

And if so, better to be on the frontlines than three years behind. So here I am. Besides, I'm quite self-centered, as any of my sorority sisters will tell you, so who better than to blab about their emotional state where thousands of strangers can read about it? Besides, it beats cleaning.