Before I set off for China, I envisioned being able to get on the internet on a pretty frequent basis, and I wasn't wrong there, but what I forgot to take into account was the Great Firewall. Being unable to access Blogger took the pressure off of documenting my travels, but now, there's so much to document that really, the picture that I'm going to paint for you is a finger painting using only the primary colors. But that's not the subject of this post, so you'll have to continue to wait for that.
I could have gotten the China 2011 post to you earlier, but then I got hung up on having pretty pictures to show too. I created a Flickr for my co-workers and put up all the typical ones. I put all of the other pictures I took on a Facebook album. The problem now is privacy. How much do I want RoughDreamer to be tied to my name and is it already so tied that it doesn't matter anymore? I've been pretty laissez-faire about my online footprint but I have some pretty paranoid friends, and while Zach (who is also pretty paranoid) is the only person I mention by name on here (that I remember anyway), conceivably, this little web I'm spinning implicates a great deal of people.
But then there's the whole, really, who gives a fuck? Do I really think anyone important or malicious enough is going to put in that much effort to stalk me in order to ruin my life or the lives of people I know? I've been meaning to Google myself and do some self-stalking but keep on forgetting...but mostly I think I won't because there's large part of me who really just doesn't want to know what's out there. I have been pretty non-discreet. But how non-discreet do I want to continue living my online life is the question.
I'm not as whiny about my personal problems and issues online as I could be. None of my status updates/tweets are about how [insert emotion/physical ailment] I am, unless you count the ones a few weeks ago about my foot. But those were special. They had pictures! Speaking of pictures, I have grown increasingly fond of taking pictures using my phone and immediately sharing them. I love the fact that because of the wonders of the Internet, I can be doing something or looking at something cool and then BAM, by the power invested in my phone and technology, you too can practically stand right next to me and experience the same thing. It's the timeliness and immediacy of the interaction that makes it awesome.
For example, Wednesday night I saw Neil Gaiman and his wife, Amanda Palmer do a little show and dance. It was much more awesome than I expected and it actually kind of just felt like we were sitting around and they were just telling us stories. It didn't seem like a big production thing at all. Jonathan Colton was even there. But anyway, I knew some people would have been interested in the fact that this show was happening, so I took a picture of the billboard at the Moore and was going to tweet about it, but the network there was terrible or something and the tweet didn't publish. So instead of doing it way after the fact, I just deleted it. No point in letting people know about it now. It was just some thing that I did. The picture wasn't even that interesting.
The reason I don't post about negative stuff is because I dislike pity or even people feeling like they're emphasizing with me. Not specifically because of the whole "fuck you, you have no idea what it's like to be me", but mostly because I am ALL about managing how I appear to others. Yes of course I'm just as fucked up as the next person, but why should I advertise that? I'm happiest when everyone else thinks I'm happy. And luckily for me, I have a great group of friends that go out of their way to make sure that I'm generally pretty happy, so it's not really smoke and mirrors. Also, I hate dealing with my problems/issues/concerns/whatever over and over again, so if no one even knows to ask, then it's one less rehashing I have to do.
