In which I was born into a world that did not contain the word “blogger.”

I’m not going to call myself an early adapter because I’m not. But I have been blogging for about eight years now, and in spite of having lost a shitload of content over the years – server crashes, failed backups, my own stupidity – I find that when I log into my current CMS, it greets me with these statistics: “You have 1,617 posts, 11 pages, 49 drafts, contained within 71 categories and 217 tags. You have 5,688 total comments, 5,255 approved, 433 spam and 0 awaiting moderation.”

Yeah. That’s a lot of content.

I was trolling around on the ‘net today and watched a few minutes of this and thought, “So what. Pictures of kids. Who cares.”

And then I realized what I’d just thought.

I no longer look at images of young skinny things doing whatever it is that they do and identify with it. I no longer think I am one of them.

And then I thought, they can’t remember a world in which people didn’t keep millions of insipid, useless diaries on the web for all to see.

More privacy: none of us know our neighbors. Less privacy: we all hook up and break up and get fired on the Internet in front of the whole world. More privacy: we only post pictures of ourselves that we actually like, so our online-only friends think we’re prettier than we really are. Less privacy: WE POST PICTURES OF OURSELVES ON THE ‘NET.

Weird world, innit? Especially with this Internet thing. I truly do love it.

One day I’ll be a venerated old-school blogger, tolerated by the kids only because I’ve been doing it for so long. Imagine that.

In other news, I hope you’re all getting whatever it is that you need from the holiday: time off, time alone, time with loved ones, a new Wii, both the drumsticks, whatever. Big love.