may i see your i.d.?

it's not that i'm a conspiracy theorist. (most of the time...) it's just that a little anonymity is more fun. more than half of the people who even know about this blog don't know my name and/or goo.gleable identity, and i like it that way. most of you don't know what i really do for a living, which pleases me. i'm generally somewhat excited about revealing things about myself, if you couldn't already tell, because it's challenging and fun. i actually have no objection to sharing that information on my blog, or at the open mics, or with cyber or poetry acquaintances. however, i do have an objection to the shortcuts that i think people would take when drawing conclusions about who they think i am as a person, based on things that don't adequately reflect the nature of my character or the way my mind looks (thanks to will, my mental look-alike, for that concept), like what my name is, or what i do for a living, or where i went to school, or whatever i've ever been involved in that can be gathered with a few clicks here and there on the internet and/or a quick goo.gle search.

(aside: did anyone do a goo.gle search yesterday? you know how sometimes they change their goo.gle image to fit the season or a holiday, for example? well yesterday, they just had a bunch of dots that didn't even look like the letters. i paused... thought about it... then realized that i was looking at braille and i smiled at myself for figuring out the riddle. you know what i did next, right? i'm a little crazy, i know. but i don't care. i touched the computer monitor to run my fingertips over the dots to see what goo.gle felt like, knowing full well that the dots weren't raised and that i wouldn't feel anything but cool, smooth computer screen under my gliding fingers. i just couldn't help it. i wonder how many other crazy people touched their computer screens yesterday. maybe there's enough strength in our numbers for me to know that i'm not crazy - just a little imaginative, or a little playful, or maybe eccentric um, silly - cause you have to be rich to properly be termed "eccentric.")

back on topic: librarians are quiet, and strippers are nasty, and doctors are egotistical and a little geeky, w.nba players are lesbians, accountants are boring, and people who work at the fast-food joint or the shoe store aren't bright. right? wait - that's not fair. and people who went to school at fill-in-the-blank must be fill-in-the-other-logical-blank, right? um, no, that's not fair, either. so i aim to try my best to remain just that girl who writes that stuff, allowing a reader draw their conclusions about me solely based on the contents of myself that i challenge myself to whisper loudly on the page. so far as readers who knew me when - they know the deal already. they know who i am enough to not have to be lazy and use shortcuts to judge my character and personality based on the cocktail party litany of where i went to school and what i do for a living. those things don't define me, and i refuse to let them, either on the blog or on the stage.

at least until i start publishing books, of course. then i will volunteer the government name with the quickness. otherwise, how else will you know how to find my little bound labor of love sitting on a shelf at the store? (buy hardback, and buy copies for all your friends! LOL!) and how else will you know that the author at the book signing is me, waiting to happily and gratefully scribble, dear reader, who been reading my thoughts from way back, thanks for reading the blog and encouraging me to keep scribbling! love, glory government name. and then you can take my government name and put it in goo.gle and see that i had nothing to hide in the first place...

there's my reason for (semi-) anonymity. what's yours?