Creeping paranoia

Earlier in the week I checked my Yahoo mail account because I wanted to look at my spam since it's gotten sort of interesting lately. (Yes, I fully aware of how much I need a life.) In the regular inbox there was an email with a subject that read "old high school friend" or something similar. (I'm too lazy to check.) I sort of groaned when I saw it, wondering who on earth was contacting me. No one ever sends me email unless they want me to have a larger penis, buy prescription drugs, invest in dodgy schemes, or help them get millions of dollars out of a Nigerian bank. OK, I'm exaggerating, but I don't get much personal email in this account, which is also the email account for this blog.

I looked at the name on the email and it was Jeff, my old best friend from like 7th grade until he moved away right after 10th grade. How the hell did he find me after all these years? After we exchanged an email or two I found out. Back in December I put some information up on my old unused Flickr account and then forgot about it. I put my name (with last name), a small photo of my face in all its hideousness, my hometown, my email address, and a link to my blog. GAH! What did I do that for? (I plead insanity.) An old high school friend tracking me down via Google and Flickr is one thing, but family members and co-workers possibly doing it is something else entirely, so I took that information down and then went around the entire internet taking other information down in a fit of paranoia worthy of the Nixon administration. So I guess the crisis (such as it was) has been averted. My nightmares involve me being shown a printout of my blog at work and asked to explain myself. Other nightmares involve me being spanked by naked midgets, but I digress.

Anyway, back to Jeff. We used to play Dungeons & Dragons together and he and his older brother Mike would come over to my house to play video games on the Atari 2600 or Commodore 64 and annoy my sister. We were nerds. Hmmm... Sounds like I had an almost normal childhood. Or at least a really nerdy adolescence. Good thing I grew out of that. Shut-up!

Jeff was so inspired by the inanities of my blog that he's gone and started his very own. So enjoy the blogging enthusiasm while it lasts, Jeff. When the enthusiasm takes a hike, as mine did long ago, you'll look at your blog one morning and say, "Why the hell do I do this?"