The Semi-Reluctant Blogger

When it comes to the Internet, I may, on the surface, appear to be a bit of a dinosaur, behind the times in all things electronic, but the reality is that I'm aware of these things long before I choose to become a part of them. I just made my Facebook page last year, and this is my first foray into blogging, but I've known what they both were almost from the start.

As hard as it may be for some of you young folk to believe, I was there when the Internet began. I was online in '92, in the heady days of newsgroups and cyber-rebellion and unregulated URLs, before commercialization, when only the kids and the nerds knew what was going on. Maybe that's why I'm slow to jump on a bandwagon these days, because while everyone else aboard is just enjoying the music, I'm watching where the wagon is headed. Remember MySpace? Don't feel bad, not many do. I took a look at it and gave it a pass. It was one of the first of its species to emerge from the trees and walk on two legs, and just like Australopithicus, it's gone now, driven out by a more evolved successor, leaving only a few fossils and a vestigial remnant of its DNA behind. It and others like it only served to carve out a new ecological niche in the electronic wilderness, then from amongst them one and only one--Facebook--rose to apex predator status.

I'm not really a 'joiner' (though neither do I consider myself a natural leader; more on that some other time), so perhaps it makes sense that I would wait to make sure something has staying power before I invest any time and energy in it. I remain wary of social networking, but it has its uses, so now that there is a clearly dominant franchise, I'm in for a penny. I'm still not certain that we won't all be posting and messaging and poking and tagging somewhere else in five years' time; after all, I'm one of the old-timers who remembers what happened to AOL... such a tragedy, watching the poor critter waste away like that. Makes me shudder to think of it.

Likewise, this blogging thing seems to have caught on, so after much obstinance and procrastination, I'm giving it a shot. It's a little strange; due to my dynamic and mercurial nature, which is a fun way of saying I have Attention Deficit Disorder (no H, thankyouverymuch), I've never had much luck at maintaining a diary. The closest I've ever come would be the travel journals I keep when on the road; look forward to excerpts from those in future posts. Only now here I am doing just that, but with an audience, and one mostly composed of strangers at that. 

What will you think of me? What kind of person will I become in your mind? Will your imaginary Anders, based only on the bits of myself I choose to share with you, be anything like the real me, or will he be an entirely different person, raised to a near-corporeal state in the collective imagination of you, the Readers? I can envision another Anders who will eventually become his own separate being, brought to life not by my stories and blog posts, but by the minds of those who read them. 

I've forgotten where I started. Blogging seems to do that to people.

I guess that means I'm a part of it now.