I love dragonflies. This is a fairly recent development.
When Presley was born he went straight to special care. The name label on his incubator was decorated with a dragonfly sticker. I now own many items with a dragonfly motif. Something bad will happen if I don't keep collecting dragonflies. It's his talisman. His animal spirit. What a load of nonsense. I don't really believe that, I'm just a sentimental soul who likes to shop.
I'm also strangely enjoying tapping away at my laptop right now. I haven't been able to write for a while. I've been very busy. It's not only that that has kept me away from my blog. I feel trapped by Google.
I order birthday presents for the boys, forgetting to use an incognito window, and I spent the next week hastily closing tabs when ads for those presents pop up. I look at a handbag, but it's too expensive. I see sense and decide not to buy it. I spend the next week being tormented by that bag on every website. Don't even get me started on how Facebook has changed so I can't see what I want to see, or the way no one talks on Twitter, only broadcasts, or how you're supposed to use 12 filters and 47 hashtags on Instagram. I've digressed. I'm sorry, but ARGH.
My Blogger blog is linked to G+ - I have no idea why, it's a colossal waste of time, but I've had 1.5m views, so I can't bin it, can I? G+ is linked to my Gmail account. I use my Gmail account for work, for school, for real life friends and acquaintances. I noticed recently that Google had started calling me Sandy Calico when I send an email. Now it's out there I can't force people to forget they ever saw that name. Now people I know through work, school and elsewhere all know about my blog. I'm assuming now that they all wondered who Sandy Calico was and Googled me. They know things about me that I wouldn't have necessarily shared with them in real life.
There is so much that I need to say. I need to dump some of the thoughts churning around in my mind. Some of them keep me awake at night. Some haunt me in the daytime. It would certainly help me, and I feel it may help others, if I write about my struggles with food, for instance, but how can I when I know who is reading? Everything is muddled, when it should be compartmentalised. I want all the people I know to stay in the little boxes I put them in. If I want to let someone out of their box, that should be my choice.
Imagine a Venn diagram of people who know me by my real name and people I don't mind knowing my pseudonym. It should be up to me to put them in the intersection.
I can't be bothered to start a new, anonymous blog. I don't have it in me to build up another 'brand'. Incidentally every blogger having to be their own brand and competing with each other has pretty much killed the blogging community (in my opinion). Now it's all about links and promotion, there's nothing natural or pure about it. Yes, I'm digressing. I'm not sorry about that.
I'd like to unravel the internet and start it again.
This is my space and I don't feel comfortable here anymore.
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What is the point of social media? Written in Jan 2012, it's still how I feel.
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