Wednesday, February 19, 2003

What's In A Name?
or
Not All Who Wander Are Consistent

I've noticed that links to this site are all over the map: In various places Not All Who Wander Are Lost is variously listed as Not All Who Wander Are Lost, Mediakit, and now, in ericj's succinct style, Wander: Not Lost. Similarly, as some who comment and visit know me in real life (hi, dad!) and some don't (hi, hs203-111-66.ftl-nj.datapeer.com!), I've been referred to by visitors as Josh and Joshua, BoyHowdy and boyhowdy. And I just wanted to take a moment to make it clear that I'm okay with that.

Look, I know I'm not following the rules that would help focus the blog. For example, I know there should be a link to some rules back there in that last sentence, but I got distracted looking through my myriad links to find one of the many blogs out there which offer some sort of litany for success; ADHD can do that to a blogger. My name and my site's name and my site's address don't match, and don't interconnect thematically. This blog isn't really about one thing; it's about me, and I am many things (and also not many things -- I am not, for example, every woman, nor would I wish to be).

But life's like that -- multiple and amorphous, lazily interconnected, occasionally starbright but mostly hazy with a 90% chance of confusion. Cyberlife even moreso, now that we can breathe a kind of projected humanity into our avatars, divorcing the body from the self completely. A life like that deserves a representation to match; an accurate complexity demands it, really. Unless we're okay with the two-dimensionality of our avatars. But doesn't that just beg the question of whether there's a here here at all, and if so, whether we're really in it?

I could refer to myself as mediacat and call the site mediapundit, or something similarly derivative which matched URL with title. Not All Who Wander Are Lost could be hosted by The Wanderer, at wanderlost.blogspot.com; we could make puns about wanderlust if we were feeling cheeky. I could sift through the cracked facets of the ego mirrorball, and try to discern the middle; I could find my totem, and use it. But that's just not me me me me me. And no matter what we claim we're doing, blogs are about ourselves.

posted by boyhowdy | 12:23 AM |

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