my my my

"take care of yourself." - my therapist


"on quest for self"



we have ourselves, and we have our internet selves.  our selves are human beings--mammals not reptiles or amphibians.  mammals like primates and also like whales.  we relate to other people because we are programmed to.  we form groups, we work together.  we create systems and hierarchies.  we celebrate things.  we have existed as human beings for last five or ten thousand years.  we are an ancient species like all the other ones who have survived this long.

our internet selves are mostly annoying.  i don't know anyone who, when reflecting on past manifestations of their internet selves, doesn't think"that sounds dumb now."  the internet is important. but we use it in ways that make us all look a little desperate.  it is built into the mechanism. the internet is brand new--it probably won't ever work as well as the way the alligators hatch out of their shells.  our internet selves are the things we wrote on grindr and myspace that don't technically ever "go away." barack obama didn't have too haunting of a "past internet self," but most of us will probably encounter that problem in one way or another.

i know that the self doesn't technically "exist."  but amazon dot com has access to so much individual metadata on you, that we're getting closer to a self existing every single day!

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"a funny thing"




this weird thing happened today.  i was babysitting these two little boys that i've been sitting for the past almost year.  i was reading to the younger one in bed while the older one was in his adjoining room reading to himself.  the older one came over to the bed, where i was laying next to the younger one in a completely appropriate way.  because i was reclined, the small of my back was showing a little bit, also in a that would make no one uncomfortable.

i own a few pairs of really slutty underwear.  i don't know why.  and i decided to wear one of them today.  again, i don't know why.  but because the small of my back was slightly exposed, the top of my underwear was peaking out.  and, on that particular day, the under wear that i happened to be wearing was the cut closest to "jockstrap" while still technically being marketed as "underwear." so what this kid saw was a flash of the strap of a pair of underwear that must have looked very different than his.

it wasn't a big deal and we related fine after that moment.  but i think what i saw when i saw him see that peculiar underwear was him seeing, for the first time, that i am gay.  i know he knows that word.

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i want to go to the beach!