Explain why you chose your blog’s title and what it means to you.

My blog’s title is really straightforward. Thoughts and Opinions. It might as well have a byline underneath it celebrating the First Amendment as that single amended law has protected me time and time again, which is actually the reason why the title is the way it is. I am not stating facts, there are no facts here. There is just opinion and thoughts, private bits, First Amendment Protected Bits. While I have little use for the Second Amendment, the First Amendment is right up there with the Fourth. When I get to thinking about these, the first, the fourth, for example, I think it comes down to “Leave me alone” writ large. It’s a silly thing to title a blog, “Leave me alone” so instead, I just put down Thoughts and Opinions. After reading any of my posts, especially the ones where I talk about situations where I must deal with other human beings, the other phrase is used a lot, and frankly, it’s a close second to “Thoughts and Opinions” and that is “Hell Is Other People.” Oh god, how true that is. Nothing is as awkward or uncomfortable or as unpleasant as someone else. I make choice exceptions to that singular rule, but on the whole, I endure people, I don’t celebrate them. Actually I guess I do celebrate a part of them, they’re leaving – that I really like.

It’s something that I’ve learned after being exposed, or as some would say, over-exposed in Facebook, Twitter, and this Blog, that I don’t seek readers. It took a long while to get over being self-aggrandizing, for being loud and noisy, for thinking what I wanted was to be noticed. I don’t. Being noticed, like acquiring readers is a foolish part of being young. Over time you come to realize that very little good can come from attention, once in a blue moon the attention is positive and it’s something pleasant. Far too commonly however, attention is the opposite. It’s problems, complaints, upsetness, irritation – something unpleasant. So on Twitter, especially when I see that I might be at risk of following or being-followed-by more than 150 people I go on block binges. I throw people off, drive them off because if I don’t, I feel cheap and exposed and less three-dimensional and more two-dimensional. I sometimes wonder at what point is someone who is followed too much on a social networking system relegated to being one-dimensional. This concerns me, I think that big networks devalue everyone who is a part of them and that’s why, that magical 150, that’s why 150 is so important. You can’t help it. Anything more than 150 and you are hurting other people, surely unintentionally, but it’s still social savagery to attempt to engage with more than 150 others. So I save myself and the nameless faceless strangers by not being too attractive or too attention-grabbing. The blog I do for myself, as any honest journalist should. The only thing about the blog that I will admit to is that it’s all solitary work with the blinds open and in front of the window.