Days Slipping By

November 12, 2025 — Pat Bertram

The days slipped away without my paying attention, until suddenly, it’s not midsummer anymore, with its intensive heat and bright sunlight, but is now mid-November with its cool days, cold nights, and creeping darkness.

Even worse, I’m not snug in my insulated life, with no real knowledge of the world around me, but have been slammed into the middle of a lot of confusing issues.

It all started with Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Because of my mostly sequestered life (and even, admittedly, because of my age), I didn’t know who he was, so I started watching snippets of his talks. Which led me to more snippets of controversy. Which led to more snippets of life and how scary it is out there. No, not “out there” beyond Earth. Just “out there” beyond my own horizons.

Which has left me absolutely lost and confused and so very ready to go back to my cloistered life.

For example, there is a lot of talk about microplastics and how dangerous they are both to us individually and to the environment. The underlying message seems to be one of blame to us consumers, which is nuts. At least in my case, it is. Whenever there was a choice, I always bought products in glass jars or bottles. Not only did the food taste better since there was no leaching of plastic flavors or plastic particles, but the containers served as food storage containers, which cut down the use of even more plastics. But now almost everything comes in plastic. Whose fault is it that there are no glass containers anymore? Not mine, certainly, and yet there is that undercurrent of finger pointing. Well, point that finger elsewhere.

Then there are crises in energy, as well as crises in water management, with again, the undercurrent of blame on the consumer. If that were all, it would be understandable, but here’s the deal — one generative artificial intelligence data center uses as much electricity as a small city and millions (no, billions!) of gallons of water.

Climate change. Yep. That’s our problem, right? Yours and mine? We have to be economical and conserve water and power, even to the point at times of dealing with rolling brownouts and unpalatable water in our faucets. But oh, yes, those people foisting generative artificial intelligence on us (in many cases, the very people who are screaming about climate change) can do whatever they want, including building their data centers in fragile ecosystems like water-deprived deserts. (Although “water-deprived deserts” is redundant, because what makes a desert is water deprivation, I used the phrase to emphasize the stupidity of it all.)

And oh, yes. Artificial intelligence. For decades, we’ve been told that AI will remove the back-breaking and demeaning jobs leaving us time for creativity. You know, like writing, composing, and art-making. Yeah, right. Generative AI is making inroads into all those creative endeavors. In fact, using Gen AI you can write a book in just a few minutes! Yay! Well, not yay. I’m being sarcastic. The whole point of writing is to write what you need to write as a unique human being. The whole point of reading is to connect to the human experience via that author’s unique perspective. In no way does “artificial” enter into the process. (To be honest, going by a lot of new books on the market, there’s not a whole lot of intelligence entering into the process either.)

I’m sure there are other areas of confusion. Actually, I know there are, but I don’t want to go into the gaslighting that seems to hold true in today’s politics. Nor do I want to get into the whole indoctrination thing and the conformity of thought that seems so prevalent. (When people mention Orwell’s 1984, they always talk about “big brother” but more important are his ministries: the Ministry of Peace propagates war, the Ministry of Truth spreads lies, the Ministry of Love dispenses fear, and the Ministry of Plenty creates scarcity. Seem familiar to the shenanigans going on today?)

Of course, I could be wrong about all this. Maybe it’s only the contrast with my quasi-hermitage that makes the world and its inhabitants seem so insane. With any luck, by writing this, I have excised these dichotomous thoughts from my head, and can go back to my normal, so very quiet and unconfusing life where the days slip by unnoticed.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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We Know Everything

September 15, 2025 — Pat Bertram

We all think we know everything because we know everything we know. The corollary to that statement, of course, is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and often we don’t even know we don’t know what we don’t know.

Whew! That’s a convoluted thought! But I come by it honestly. Honestly, I do.

I happened to fall down a dark hole of baby boomer hatred, not in real life, but on the internet. It astonished me that so many people hate “boomers,” even though their reasons don’t apply to any boomer I know. I was going to enumerate each of those reasons with a rebuttal, but decided that was a waste of my time and yours. No one can know a generation. Despite the names so arbitrarily given to the alleged generations, generations are made up of individuals, not generic beings. In fact, I have a hunch most of those who dislike certain older generations have no idea what years truly comprised those generations; the epithet “boomer” seems to be a derogatory term used to describe a mindset that younger people ascribe to any older person who doesn’t see life the way they do. (Generation gap, anyone?)

Much of what is attributed to “boomers” is really a leftover from the so-called greatest generation. When the boomers came of age, that generation was still in control. It wasn’t the boomers who destroyed the economy, but those older folks. (And it wasn’t even them. They just lived their lives. It was the politicians and global corporations who did and are still doing the damage.) The boomers got caught in a vise — although they were raised in a time of unprecedented economic stability, by the time they were raising families themselves, everything had changed. It was no longer economically feasible for a single salary to support a family. Two-incomes were suddenly necessary. And despite what people believe about the boomer economic well-being, millennials have a higher net worth than baby boomers at the same age. Although the millennials bought their first house later than boomers, and paid more, finances weren’t always the reason for the delay — many prioritized other life experiences over owning a home and starting a family.

Also, I was surprised to find that boomers are no longer the largest generation; millennials are. And the alpha generation is forecast to be the largest generation in history.

But all of that is beside the point, which is that we don’t know what we don’t know. What some people don’t like about boomers is that they aren’t grateful for the unprecedented economic and educational time they lived in, but how can they be grateful for something they didn’t know was something to be grateful for, especially since each of them was struggling in their own way? As I said, generations are made up of individuals, and each individual, no matter what generation they belong to (or don’t belong to: the generations, after all, are just marketing designations) lives their life as best as they can under the conditions they are given.

I have a hunch that, since “generation” isn’t really an intrinsic thing (we aren’t born with the name of our generation tattooed on our foreheads), most people who dislike a particular generation simply dislike certain people they have met from that generation (and if the disliked generations are older, those people are most often parents, grandparents, teachers, and other authority figures.)

But whatever the reason, “boomer” hatred does seem to be a thing. Luckily, I don’t know any generations, only people. I have never blamed younger people for the hardships they find themselves dealing with. And I don’t blame older people for the hardships they find themselves dealing with. All any of us can do is deal with is what we know, not what we don’t know.

Still, I am utterly grateful to be on the downward slope of my life. I wouldn’t want to live in the world that is shaping up around the younger generations.

(Just out of curiosity, since I’ve been thinking about all of this: has any other generation had to deal with so much change as the boomers? Especially technological change. To young boomers, television was a brand-new thing. Phones were wired into the wall. Vinyl records and radio were the sole sources for listening to music. Only girls learned typing — on manual typewriters, no less. And yet look at those people today: most are proficient on their various electronics. Those still working are as proficient as anyone.)

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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Look What I Found!

March 1, 2025 — Pat Bertram

I was walking around my yard today, enjoying a bit of sunshine, and look what I found!

Such a glorious ending to a few not-so-pleasant days. Oh, I’m fine, there’s nothing really wrong, I’ve just had to deal with changing my primary email address as well as wherever I used that email for online sites. This change wasn’t by choice and I’m not happy about it, but it was necessary.

A few years ago, the free email that was provided by my website domain provider was changed to a paid Outlook account. I was so daunted by the idea of making the change, that when I got a good deal on Outlook, I went ahead and paid ahead for several years. (Money that is now wasted.) I’ve gradually been changing over as I open new accounts or lose friends or whatever, but last week Microsoft informed me I would have to download an authenticator to my phone so I can continue using the email account. The bizarre thing is that this particular email was never able to be downloaded to my phone, and the authenticator doesn’t work for PCs, so they were demanding something utterly unnecessary. I was supposed to have two weeks until the authenticator was mandatory, but since I knew how discouraging the whole process would be, I started immediately to do the work. Good thing. Instead of having two weeks, I ended up with a single week. Luckily, I think I got everything, and if I didn’t, I will just have to presume it’s not important.

Along the way, as I had to update accounts, I ended up deleting one or two. Pinterest, for example. I never did understand that site, and when I tried to update the email address, they wouldn’t do it unless I provided a date of birth. I gave a fake one, of course, then when I was finally able to access the site, I deleted the whole thing.

At least, that was easy. Worse, I found two places for my online banking where I needed to change the address but alerts still went to my old address. I had to call to the bank to get them find the third place. Both the gas company and the internet company had those same issues. One important account had nowhere to change the address, so another call. And then, of course, there were all those places where I used a different email address but used my primary one for backup.

With any luck, I made all the changes, but oh! What a mess!

Then, considering that Microsoft was the company that put me in this situation, I decided I needed to back up all my pictures and documents elsewhere in case they do the same thing with that email. I had used OneDrive to back up my previous computer just because it was an easy way to move them to my new computer. (Which, come to think of it, is now elderly in computer years.) And then, because I was in a snippy mood, I ended up deleting photos and documents I haven’t looked at in years. (Snippy meaning not happy, snippy meaning feeling like snipping things away.)

So, finding those sunny crocus faces beaming at me this morning sure made my day brighter.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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Internet Restored!

May 18, 2023 — Pat Bertram

My internet has been restored. You’ll never guess what was wrong, so I’ll just go ahead and tell you — it was in a car accident. Yep. That’s right. A car accident.

Unlike most of my friends who have switched to a localized internet company that uses fiber optics, I still have the internet I started with. The cable is adequate for my needs — just about the only thing that might suffer a bit from the slower internet speed is the hidden object game I play, but even that’s not an issue since I’m getting a bit bored with it. Anyway, that doesn’t have anything to do with my outage except to explain how a car could destroy my internet connection — this company still has the green cable utility box in the alley, and apparently, someone ran into it and destroyed it.

Since I am the only one who was affected, it leads me to believe that most people on this block who have internet have gone with the fiber optic choice, but I intend to continue dealing with the original company, as annoying as they are. My rate is locked in for as long as I live here, and since I don’t intend to move until I’m dragged out, I figure that static price will be a good revenge for any problems. Not that I have many problems — this is the first real outage I’ve experienced in the past four years.

When they told me it would be a week before they could restore service, I panicked because I spend (waste) a lot of time on the internet, and I had no idea what I would do with all that extra time. As it turns out, it wasn’t a problem at all. I mowed my lawn, did some gardening, gave my house a good cleaning, read books, watched movies on DVDs friends had passed on to me that I never watched (I hadn’t watched a movie in years), did one of the paint-by-number pictures I’d been given as a gift, walked some, exercised some. And then suddenly, here I am, with the internet again.

When I was without service, I discovered that one of the reasons I was online so much was that I’d get bored and restless when I read too much, and it was just habit to go on the internet to play games or look up gardening information or whatever. So now I have other options. Well, I always had those other options, I just didn’t make use of them. Chances are, I’ll go back to my old habits, but for now, it’s nice to be offline most of the time.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Posted in gardening, internet, life. Tags: , , , , . 6 Comments »

Going Cold Turkey

May 12, 2023 — Pat Bertram

My internet went out yesterday. I didn’t worry because such things happen, especially in times of high winds, but when I wasn’t reconnected after an hour or so, I braved the labyrinth of the company’s automated phone system. Eventually I was transferred to a real person (at least I think she was) and after enduring multiple sessions of being put on hold, I was informed that it wasn’t an area problem but isolated to me. I didn’t even worry when she said that she’d schedule a service call, but when she gave me the day and time — sometime during the day next Wednesday, I panicked. Seven days without the internet? Not possible.

Well, it will be possible since there is no other choice, and I do have my phone, but still, I spend a LOT of time on the internet, playing games, researching, and various other things, and suddenly, all that time will need to be spent doing . . . who knows what. I already read too much, and because of the heavy rains we’ve been having, there isn’t much I can do outside unless I want to slip and slide in the mud.

I am sure I will be okay, it just takes a mental adjustment. After all, I spent most of my life without the internet, and I always found things to do. Of course, I was working full time, which filled most of my hours, so reading was a much-treasured luxury, not a way of life, and afterward, there were the years spent writing, but now? I guess I’ll find out if there is, in fact, life without the internet.

Luckily, I have things planned — working a couple of afternoons, taking my car in for a tune up, going to a farewell lunch for a friend who’s leaving the country for a year or two. When the ground dries a bit, I will
have a huge amount of weeding to do. And there are various projects I’ve been putting off that I can get finally get around to doing.

When I lost the connection, I was in the midst of trying to decide what seeds to buy to plant in my raised garden, which is supposed to be filled with soil next week. The internet going out seems to be a sign to wait on that purchase; after all, I’ve been through this before where a scheduled job was put off indefinitely. And if the garden is actually filled, well, I don’t suppose waiting a week to order the seeds will make much difference. And anyway, having an extra week to plan the garden isn’t a bad thing. It will give me something to think about while I am going cold turkey.

Posted in gardening, internet, life. Tags: , , . 9 Comments »

Communicating Online

January 17, 2023 — Pat Bertram

Today’s blog prompt is: In what ways do you communicate online? I had to think about this one because except for an occasional phone call, almost all my not-in-person communication is online. (I had to check to see if texting is considered online, and it is.) I don’t participate in social networking anymore, or at least not much. I do check for personal messages on Facebook occasionally (about once every week or two), and I check Twitter every month or two, and LinkedIn every year or so, but for the most part, I eschew that sort of communication. I used to be big on all those sites, mostly to try to promote myself as an author, but the response has dwindled so much over the years and the aggravation has increased so much that it’s just not worth it.

I never did get involved in any of the other major networking sites. I tried Pinterest, and never saw the point. By the time I got a smart phone and could join Instagram, it had been bought by Facebook, and I didn’t want to increase my exposure to that company, especially since they treat me so poorly. I have no interest in video communication of any kind, not even just watching videos, so that leaves off a few more communication opportunities. For a while, I participated in Quora, answering questions about grief, but that lost its charm when they accused me of plagiarism, though it was only myself I was quoting.

[Is it even possible to plagiarize yourself? Seems silly to me. I mean, I own what I write, so I can do with it what I wish. Still, I checked online and apparently self-plagiarism is bad because you are passing off old material as new and original, which is considered academically dishonest, though if not in an academic situation, and if one is not being paid, I still don’t see anything wrong. I suppose, in spirit of honesty, I should admit that very occasionally I do copy parts of previous blogs posts or rework one I especially like that hardly anyone ever saw. After all, WordPress has a feature where one can copy a post to repost it — it’s all part of the process — so once or twice a year, I make use of that facet of the platform.]

After jumping feet first into communicating online when I first got my computer about fifteen years ago, I’ve cut way back on the ways I communicate. Now I text via phone, communicate via emails, and write this blog. All very basic for these days.

In what ways do you communicate online?

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Posted in blogging, life, internet. Tags: , , , , , . 3 Comments »

Do You Know That for Sure?

January 16, 2023 — Pat Bertram

When I was chatting with my friends this weekend during our day trip, the conversation segued into a discussion of “made in USA” products. Although I do look for that label, I also understand that just because it says “made in USA” it doesn’t mean it’s made in this country by non-sweatshop workers. In fact, there is an island not far from China that is a commonwealth of the USA, and despite its gorgeous weather and scenery, it was a horror for the workers from China and the Philippines who had been lured there with promises of higher wages (higher than mainland China, though significantly less than USA minimum wage) and living on American soil. Despite the horrendous lie and deception (not only deceiving the workers but deceiving those of us who prefer to buy products made here by people who are paid at least minimum wage) many well-known companies with well-known brands utilized those poor workers, while boasting that their designer-label clothes were made in the USA.

My companions had never heard of such a place, and one asked me, “Do you know this for sure?”

I had to admit that I didn’t. I do know for sure that I read about this island, and I do know for sure that it had been documented and well-researched because when I first heard about this travesty (long before the internet and Google) that’s all the non-fiction I was reading — books with pedigrees.

Still, what do I know? What do any of us know? Besides what we have seen or felt or experienced ourselves, we don’t know anything for sure. In my case, I have to trust my sources, and back then, it was easy — in the back of the books I read were indexes of the research involved and sources for further reading — but now, with the internet and the easy spread of . . . non-truths, let’s say . . . it’s hard to know what is or is not true.

Curious, I set about looking for this island. Not surprisingly, I couldn’t find anything on Google, but surprisingly, it was easy to find via Bing.

And yes, there is an island — Saipan — in the Northern Marianas. And yes, American garment manufacturers did utilize what amounts to slave labor. Luckily, after the scam and abuses were exposed in the early 1990s, and after millions of dollars in settlements from the apparel brands, things changed. But that’s not the end — a few years ago, the same scam was re-instigated, but this time the abused workers were construction workers.

Because of earlier scams and deceptions, even though I look for the “made in USA” label, I am leery of it. I tend to believe manufacturing shenanigans and sleight of hand still exist, but that is merely supposition gleaned from my knowledge of the corporate race to rake in as much profit as possible. But as with so much else I think I know, there’s no way to know for sure.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Posted in history/myth, internet, life. Tags: , , , , , , . 2 Comments »

Operating System Upgrade

November 16, 2022 — Pat Bertram

I had an interesting experience yesterday, one I’d never had to deal with before. When I opened my computer, I found an offer for a free upgrade to Windows 11. After looking into the pros and cons, both by checking online and by querying an IT person (or at least someone who is more knowledgeable than I am), I decided to go ahead and do the upgrade. There’s less than three years left for support of Windows 10, so the upgrade would extend the life of my computer, at least the Windows part.

According to the prompt, the upgrade was supposed to take twenty minutes, but the minutes dragged on and on, and an hour later, the download and installation still weren’t finished. I’m sure part of the lag was due to my internet service. I used to have a variable speed, with mostly fast speeds that were incredibly fast, but somewhere along the line, the internet provider divided the speeds into two separate categories, and since I could never find out what the cost of the higher speed would be (it was one of those deals where you had to pretty much sign your life away before you’d get to find out the new rate), I kept what I had. For the most part, the internet is fast enough, but until yesterday, I haven’t had to download any huge files since the change.

Whatever the reason, the whole process took so long that I had plenty of knuckle-biting time.

[Weird aside. Knuckle-biter was once common slang for something that caused anxiety or suspense, but when I Googled the term, looking for a less trite way of saying the same thing, all I could find were myriad articles about dermatophagia, a condition where people compulsively eat the skin on their knuckles and fingers. The only reference I found to “knuckle-biter” meaning suspense is a “Polish knuckle biter,” which is a left-over Polish joke meaning that there is no suspense.]

But back to my upgrade. So, there I was, not literally biting my knuckles, but beginning to worry about all the things that could go wrong. I know nothing is a “piece of cake” except, perhaps, a piece of cake. And I know the answer to the blasé rhetorical question, “What could go wrong?” is that anything can go wrong and often does. The only other time I upgraded an operating system, it was done by an IT specialist who needed to install the new system so he could fix something else that was wrong with my machine, and he “forgot” to uninstall the previous operating system, which caused an enormous number of problems. (I think it was Trend Micro who, in looking for the reason why their program hogged all my CPUs, discovered the mistake and unistalled the old operating system for me.)

As more minutes ticked away, I worried about all the things that could go wrong. I didn’t care about my files so much since most are backed up, but I did worry about their messing with MS Word since I had such a difficult time getting it purchased and installed in the first place. (Not surprisingly, MS doesn’t want to sell the program — they make a whole lot more money by selling subscriptions.) Although I wasn’t worried about learning the new system — using a computer has always come easy to me — I did wonder about possible changes.

As it turned out, despite my concern, the only problem with the upgrade was the length of time it took for the new system to install itself. As far as I can see, everything I need is still in place and working well. Although there might be major differences under the hood, so to speak, for me, most of the changes seem cosmetic.

So perhaps it wasn’t such an interesting experience after all.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Posted in internet, life. Tags: , , , , , . 7 Comments »

I’m Doing Well

October 23, 2022 — Pat Bertram

If you’re one of those who has been worried about my virtual disappearance, worry no more. I’m doing well. I haven’t disappeared in real life, just online life. I still manage to blog once or twice a week, but I don’t go through the rigmarole of posting the link on Facebook. It got to be too much, not just writing every day, but reblogging to another blog as well as posting the photo on a third blog and reblogging that to the reblogged blog just so I can bypass FB’s unfairly punitive ways to post my blog link on the site.

I feel good about not blogging every day, and I feel even better about boycotting FB, though I do feel bad about not keeping up with grief friends, both online and off. I just can’t handle secondhand grief anymore. (A friend recently died, and I dread seeing her husband, also a friend, when he returns to this country. It’s not exactly kind or generous or sensitive, but it’s the truth of me right now.)

I’ve also been doing well with my yard — the leaves from my neighbors’ trees will start falling any day (perhaps even later today because of the high winds we’re dealing with), but until it’s time to rake those leaves or to water the grass again, there’s nothing for me to do outside. What a change! Admittedly, I earned the change. I’ve been spending three or four hours every day digging up Bermuda grass, weeds, and dead annuals in preparation for winter wildflower sowing. I also spent several of those days digging up, hacking apart, and replanting the New England aster. If even half of them survive the winter, I’ll be having to deal with maybe a hundred plants next fall. But that’s not for another year.

I’ve also been doing well with cleaning house — everything is as spotless as I can get it, so there’s no inside chore niggling at me, either.

So, with nothing to do today except read and relax and fix a couple of meals, I’m doing really well!

And speaking of “well,” Here’s a well of a different sort. It’s funny, but I wished for a wishing well, and look! I got my wish! I had to fix the roof that was falling apart, and I shingled it with leftover shingles, and now — oh, what a beauty!

I threw wishes into the well for your wellbeing, so I hope it works and that you’re doing well, too.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Posted in blogging, gardening, internet, life. Tags: , , , , , . 12 Comments »

Big Sibling

August 5, 2022 — Pat Bertram

Detectives and other operatives in current mysteries and thrillers look to the internet and the sites where people hang out for clues, so much so that when an author fails to mention those social sites, the absence is glaring. Just as when they don’t mention cell phones. Because cell phones make our lives so much easier and make it harder to be out of touch, the cliché is that the character forgot to charge the phone or is out of range or some such excuse to put the character further into jeopardy.

Which reminds me of Judge Judy and how when defendants talk about a text conversation, and Judy wants to see the message, the defendants always say that it was on a different phone that got broken, and now they have a new one. It happens so often that it’s rather a running joke. But as amusing (or not) as that may be, this post isn’t about cell phones but the social sites.

Have you ever noticed I cannot bring myself to call it “social media”? The closest I come is “social networking sites,” which is what they were known as when I first got online. The “media” part, I suppose, is to make us think these sites have some sort of credence, which they don’t. Not only is the news (on any side of any matter) suspect, so are the lives people portray. As if they are better — or badder — than they are in real life.

In fiction, the lives portrayed online are counted as evidence, especially if someone tells a detective they hadn’t seen the victim in several months, and an online photo shows them together. Or if they say they have never been to a certain place, and a post says otherwise.

Since this happens in real life too, I have never been so naïve as to think that anything I post online is private. I have assumed from the first day that “Big Sibling” is watching me. (Trying to be gender neutral here.) To that end, I have never posted anything I wanted to keep private. In fact, I want people to see my posts and to get to know me in the hope that they will buy my books. Still, I do wonder what I am inadvertently giving away. Anyone can do a bit of detective work and find out where I live, but any official would already know that. Anyone can put the clues together and come up with my age. A few people know when I was born, but generally online I use a pseudonymous birthday. And anyway, that information is available in any official data bank, and especially is available to anyone who has access to my driver’s license, so it’s not much of a secret.

Those officials could comb Facebook for my friends, but then, they would probably already know who they were. And Twitter and LinkedIn? I have no idea who most of my connections are, and I have no interaction with them. In fact, my profiles on both sites are more or less moribund, though the link to my daily blog is posted on both sites. Or at least it’s supposed to be. I haven’t checked recently to see if that is currently the case.

I don’t post photos directly to Facebook, though I suppose they are stored on their servers anyway because of the link to the link to my blog that I post on the site. But that’s okay. Lately all I’ve been posting are images of flowers, not me and whatever victim I might be accused of victimizing. (Though my life is so boring, I’m sure if any official were to check with my neighbors, all they would have to say about me is, “Yes, I know her. Yes, I saw her. I don’t remember what day, but it doesn’t matter. I see her out in her yard every day.)

I am so used to telling the details of my small life that if I did have a secret, I probably wouldn’t have one. I would have blabbed it here, and a blabbed secret is no longer a secret. Though come to think of it, it’s possible they would think that anyone so bland would have to be hiding something (something other than blandness, that is).

Too bad. It would be fun to have a secret. Or maybe not, if fiction is anything to go by. People with secrets are often victims. Since that brings us back to the beginning of this post about officials who come to social sites looking for clues as to who might have wanted to erase the secret by erasing the victim, I’ve apparently come to the end of what I wanted to say.

I hope you have a very nice (and very private) day.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

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