Why is this new blog called “This Is Just For Me?” Well, because part of me wants absolutely no one to read this. That this is truly only an exercise for one.

I used to write a lot, back in the halcyon days of blogging. I never, ever wanted to blog again. Never thought I would.

But sometimes…

You just have to write. You don’t want to. You push past the optics of being a person who blogs, past the ick of your neediness and delusions of personal grandeur.

Because deep down, I am a flashing 50 foot neon sign with an arrow, “Look over here!”

But then, as soon as you pivot and zoom in, I scurry away into the darkness, hiding behind the billboard advertising my need for attention.

I want you to like me, to give me attention, but like…in a cool way.

This is just for me…unless you like it.

Last fall, I became a devoted audience of one to my husband’s ex wife’s ex boyfriend’s Tumblr.

I know, I know. But I just couldn’t stop reading it. They had recently broken up and although I had never met him, I felt a strange kinship to him. The invisible tether of dating the other half of a divorced couple & co-parenting together, but apart. A bizarre quad.

Personally, I think I’m basically an Internet sleuth/savant and have CIA level investigation skills–although probably every white woman who has read at least one Gillian Flynn book and watched a Netflix true crime series thinks this, but I promise, I’m, like, really good.

I think when you’re in your thirties, the online sleuth in you grows restless and moves on from the old ways of stalking someone’s social medias to find out if they are single. Who cares, you’re married anyways.

Now you’ve graduated to a more sophisticated echelon of cybersecurity: Zillow hunting.

Here’s a shocker–adults seem to be more private IRL about personal information than younger people. Gasp, you say. They’re private in real life, but forget that everything online is open source, baby.

Imagine the joy–the thrill–when you find that your taciturn neighbor has a website where he talks about his love of WWE.

Or your former nonprofit boss’ expensive home on Zillow (however do they afford this, you mumble to yourself before looking up their public salary information, because yes, friends, even that is findable online.)

Sometimes when I am bored, I like to pick a random person I vaguely know and see if I can “solve the mystery” aka find their house on Zillow and their wife on Facebook.

Is this my super villain era? No, this is simply my information superhighway era.