Oh, The Weather Outside Is Delightful

  Hello Dear Readers! I had to take a bit of a break for a while, and if you are wondering why you couldn't get in to read Insistent and Persistent the past couple weeks, I temporarily changed my privacy settings due to a breach. (Post coming soon: 10 Reasons Not To Friend Your Mother On Facebook--just kidding. But seriously, don't do that. Even if you get along well with your mother.)
    Without further ado, this is why I opened the blog back up and wanted to write today: I've been dreaming of a white Christmas since about July, and in Colorado, we rarely get a real white Christmas. "Real" being defined as snowing on the day or the day before, preferably overnight. This year, once again, it looks like I will be robbed of that dream once again, but on the plus side, IT'S SNOWING!! I wasn't sure if it was actually going to happen--but almost the minute the winter storm watch went into effect up here, it started snowing on my drive home from work.
    Funnily enough, it smelled like rain rather than snow, but there was also a smell of static electricity in the air. I never listen to the weather people when it comes to precipitation in Colorado--they have a nasty tendency to disappoint in terms of accumulation. But sometimes, they underestimate the storm and it dumps a few inches more than expected. As much as I hate scraping car windows and driving near so many crazy people (most of whom are from out of state and have never driven in snow before or just suck at it), I still love the snow.
    My cat (affectionately known as "the furball" received his Christmas present in the mail today--a catnip toy squirrel--another furball. He doesn't love it as much as I'd hoped, but he does like it, so that's good. (I'm hoping this might give him something to do during the day so he will consider leaving the furniture alone.)
    I got most of my shopping done online this year, for the first time. It is quite convenient. And I expect to still have money left over from what I budgeted, which means I may buy myself a rather sizable Christmas present... Or early birthday present. Or early anniversary present. Whatever. It seems like everyone is being a little lean this Christmas, compared with last year, but I think I've spent more than ever.
    I also get to go up skiing this weekend--hopefully this time I will not fall on my face again. Hoping to make great strides in my ski skills so that I won't have to stay on the Bunny Hill for the rest of the season.
    Aside from my blog, I have been getting the opportunity to write for real at work (real this time means I am actually credited!). I cannot tell you how positively tickled I am to be able to do that. I am probably spending way more time on it than i should be, but it's important to me. I want the stuff I'm writing to be good, worthy, sort of. All the other writers on the site are professional writers or journalists and have been for several years, so I feel like I need to write well enough so that I seem like I belong among that group. If you know me, you can find that stuff on Facebook. If you don't, you'll just have to wait until I decide to use my real name around here.
    Remember how I once said bad things happen in threes? I had one of those this past week. My brother got some bad news which meant I got some bad news; I got my FIRST EVER speeding ticket which I am still super-pissed about; and one of my co-workers was let go earlier this week. That one hit hardest. We're a small company, and whenever something like that happens, it affects everyone because we're all pretty close. I think what bothered me most about it was that it happened one week before Christmas.
    Not to put a damper on the holiday spirit, I discovered a new cocktail: gin and ginger ale. I received an excellent bottle of gin from a local craft distillery a couple weeks ago, and I was amazed at how clearly I could still taste the flavors through the ginger ale.
    I am also currently editing my novel that I abandoned the blog for during November. I made all the edits by hand, so now I am transferring all those changes to the document on my computer. Next step will be to revise it. What's the difference, you say? Editing: typos, spelling, grammar, syntax, vocabulary--the nuts and bolts of the writing. Revision: rewriting scenes, adding scenes, deleting scenes, removing or adding characters, etc--the heart of the story. I'm hoping not to do too much revision, because I think after going through it once now, it actually turned out quite well. But, we'll what happens when I really look at it with that in mind.
    Sorry for being out of the loop. I just had to recover a bit from my privacy scare before I was ready to come back here and start sharing again. I welcome you back, and I hope I didn't scare everyone away by changing the security settings for a couple weeks.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Privacy Please: An Analyis of Its Disappearance

  While the advent of social media has been great for improving communication in many cases, it also marks the disappearance of privacy in many ways. You can't be Facebook friends with your boss unless you're okay with him/her seeing that you spent your entire Friday night drinking beers with your friends or that you just beat Guitar Hero, again. And don't get me started on being friends with parents on Facebook. No matter how old you are, they will inevitably disapprove of certain things that you, or your other friends, post on your wall.
    But Facebook is just the start. There is still some element of privacy to it. You don't have to friend your mom or your boss. You can make your profile private so that only your Facebook friends can view what you post to it. Twitter has two options: private or public. And most blogs are the same way. You approve or disapprove the people who want to follow you and read what you have to say. But you may still have to censor yourself.
    The Internet has made privacy pretty much nonexistent, even with all the privacy settings you can add to what you might share online. Once you say something online, you can't take it back. There is a permanent digital record of all of it, somewhere, in cyberspace. Even if you delete it. And that makes honesty a real challenge sometimes, because knowing that what you say in the virtual world can come back to haunt you in the real world is kind of scary. Some people just don't realize this. But some of those that do censor what they say.
    However, taking everyone into account for censorship is a major pain in the ass. Some people will think what you have to say is funny or interesting or cool, and others will be offended or dismayed. When speaking to someone directly, some censorship is appropriate at times, though it's called tact instead. But in writing, there shouldn't be any censorship. Because then it's no longer honest. And what is the point of sharing what you're thinking through words if you're not going to be honest about it?
    As much as it has pained me, I have kept a lot to myself because I didn't want to have the people I already know think of me differently because of what I might say. And I have kept the existence of this blog and some other writing I've done a secret from certain people for that same reason. I wanted to be able to say what I thought here, and certain people might disagree. I welcome disagreement from you, dear readers, because I know that 9 times out of 10, if not more, I am completely full of shit. But I'd rather not have to argue with the people I see and speak to all the time because of some ridiculous hypothesis I put forth here.
    One day, I hope, what I have to say will be open and available for everyone, and I'll take the flack for it when that day comes. But for now, I'll write for you and for myself, and not worry about what judgment you may pass on me because of it.

The pen is, in fact, mightier than the sword.