Friday, June 27, 2008

Blog Induced Trippy Self Reflection

I started a blog today. I've been resisting the urge for some time because I know with very high probability that I will get in only a few entries before it falls to the wayside, then all will be lost to cyperspace and the bots and if I'm lucky, someone else looking for blogspot names in 5-10 years (I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist!). But most of my siblings have them, my mom has one, my dad has effectively had one since before there was such a thing, my friend's kids now have them, the neighbor's cat does, etc. etc. etc. and so the urge must be quelled. At least the future web surfer won't be cursing that I stole the best blog name. This happened a dozen times to me while searching for cool blog names that turned out to be taken from people who did what I'm about to do, but back in 2001. How dare they waste such unique blogspot names with so little content!! Truthfully, none of those names turned out to be right anyway.

Naming a blog is impossible, both the web link and the blog title. After giving up on a creative link because they were all taken, I settled on my standard roice3. For the title, I was going to do better and brainstormed "digressions of a dodecadork", which is somewhat apropos. But I felt too insecure to brave that one after Sarah text messaged me "Wow that may be the nerdiest thing I've ever heard." Besides, I'm not a dork anyway (though I am a nerd - you may be surprised to find out there is a difference...oh wait, maybe knowing that means I am a dork). Anyway, I acquiesced to my lack of wit by entering the title "roice". After staring at it for like 5 minutes trying to think of something better, I had a very weird, almost out of body, experience. This short label that is supposed to embody me suddenly looked terribly foreign and strange. The characters appeared as abstract symbols, and I had images of what "roice" might mean to my friends, siblings, and cyberfriends. Through all these eyes I suddenly felt as if I was losing grasp of the natural feeling of my own name. Since the idea of this blog is similarly ill formed, clearly this meant I was already sitting on the right title, and bonus, the experience will now get to be the subject of my first post. You should definitely try this interesting experiment future web wanderer. Write your name down and contemplate it in a self-reflecting manner until it freaks you out. Maybe it would even be better doing this in front of a mirror (I didn't try this).