Diary of a Network Geek

Too many people read my blog.

Too many people I know, too many people I care about, too many people who care about me.  In the early days of this blog, eight years ago, all I wanted was readers.  Now, all I worry about is who’s reading.  Since I started this blog, we’ve added “Dooced” to our vocabulary.  We live in a world where potential dates Google each other to see what’s on their Facebook or MySpace pages.  And, now, I’m much more careful about what I write.  I’m afraid to rant about the English gits, er, fine gentlemen from the UK, that I work with, in case they happen to be reading.  I don’t say everything that I might otherwise about women I’ve dated, or even my ex-wife.
So, poor me, right?  So many people read my blog that I’m worried about how I’ll come across, who I might offend.  I fret over little things like not getting to far away from who I am, or who I think people perceive me to be, lest I overly disturb their sense of how I fit with them and the world.  Yeah, what a terrible burden I bear.  Ha.

So, I’ve talked about starting another blog, a creative blog, that’s not so closely associated with my professional life, with me.  Something where I can experiment on the screen and go mental and emotional and creative places that I feel too stifled to go here.  The Super Secret Creative Project of Doom.  It keeps me awake at nights, like tonight, and gnaws at me like the Midgard Serpent gnaws at the roots of the Tree of Life.  And, even as I write things like that, I feel the teenage angst that’s been sent off to French boarding school and grown up into upper middle-class ennui, like I should be wearing a black beret and smoking clove cigarettes.
So, where’s the drug that’s supposed to help me?  The clove cigarettes don’t take the edge off any more and the single-malt Scotch doesn’t help me sleep.  So, what’s a guy to do at 1:00 A.M. when my mind is racing, but the track is a tight circle that’s getting ever smaller and muddier?

What’s there to do but blog?

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"The only difference between saints and sinners is that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future."
   --Oscar Wilde

Ennui is a disease of the rich.

I heard, or read, sometime, somewhere, that the poor are too busy to feel ennui.  If that’s true, then I must be quite wealthy indeed.  I don’t know what’s going on, but I just feel a general lack of passion for, well, for pretty much anything right now.  Just sort of empty, hollow and disconnected from everything that means anything.  I suppose, if I were more concerned about day-to-day living, I’d have less time to be bored with, as the French say, the pain that is life.
The funny thing is, like the French, when I get this way, I crave cigarettes.

Should I feel sad that I haven’t indulged in a smoke while still suffering the disease of the rich?
Or, should I be happy that life is going so well that this is my biggest problem?

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"My obligation is to do the right thing. The rest is in God's hands."
   --Martin Luther King