The obligatory meta-blogging post

I have looked at the referrals bit on my sitemeter thing.

It's interesting to see what Google hits I get.

Someone searched my name, complete with the accent on the é.

They got my singing website and my blog.

I hope it wasn't, you know, someone who I don't want to be reading about my excessive mentalness as displayed in the previous post. If it was you, and you think that perhaps I wouldn't want you to know all about the mentalness, please read some of the better posts. Or just don't read any of it.

I know that the risk when choosing not to be anonymous is that people will be able to know who I am, and therefore know all my secrets as I choose to disclose them. This has caused problems before. Problems and confusion, sometimes in the manner of a soap opera mix-up that is easily resolved but not before a few mistaken idenity-related red-faces, and sometimes in a more horrible, sinister way.

I don't regret putting my name underneath the things that I have written, and in a way I feel like it is a good exercise in courage of conviction to not be ashamed of what I have to say.

Of course I try to exercise restraint and discretion. In fact, I think that the previous post was the most specific, personal, and therefore dangerous (in terms of me getting into trouble) that I have written yet.

If you have googled me and you have arrived here, please don't hate me for anything I have written. Please don't think less of me because I bare my flickering soul to strangers. Please don't openly wonder how one has TIME to do this sort of thing, therefore implying that my life is empty. It takes me half an hour to write a post, and I need it now. If I don't talk to the Internet I'd only talk to you, and that would be boring for you, you'd most likely tire of me and walk off. The Internet doesn't do that. Or at least if it does then I don't know about it.

Yes, to an extent I think I write here because it is easier than actually communicating with other, non-virtual people. I don't trust people who I am supposed to trust, but I do trust the Internet not to use what I have told it and turn it back on me. I trust it not to use my own pain as ammunition against me.

In one of the Hitchhikers' Guide books (perhaps Life, the Universe and Everything) Zaphod Beeblebrox is take to Frogstar B, wherein lies the most powerful and destructive weapon of all time. It is called the Total Perspective Vortex, and it is capable of completely annihilating the human soul. It was invented by a man, a philosopher, whose wife was always on at him to stop mooning around thinking about things like 'the universe' and 'what it all means', and think about real life events. Money, for example. The washing up. She kept telling him to "get some perspective". On and on, until one day he decides to invent this machine. He links it up (to a piece of fairycake) and plugs her in. He is horrified to see that her brain is annihilated. What the Total Perspective Vortex does, you see, is show you the whole universe in its entirety, and then a little arrow flashes up, saying "You Are Here".

Perpective, it turns out, is not such a great thing after all.

The way this relates (and oh, but it's tenuous) is that when Zaphod goes in there, he is fine. He comes out having been informed that he is the most important person in the entire universe. That he, in fact, constitutes the whole universe and everything just revolves around him. This because at the time he is actually exisiting in a Virtual Universe that has been created for the sole purpose of allowing him to survive the Total Perspective Vortex.

In Blogland we are protected, we can say what we like about ourselves. We can tell as much or as little as we like, use complex analogies that don't make sense and that involve bits of stories from our favourite books, discard the rules of spelling or grammar, slag off whoever we want to slag off, and always be protected by the fact that this space is ours.

This space, this little piece of blank page, it is mine. You can say what you like about me, about what I write and who I appear to be and I can counter with the fail-safe argument that "this is my blog I'll write what I like". I can take time to explain what I mean, and then edit until I am happy, until it comes out right.

I am the centre of this tiny universe that has been created for me. In it I do not have to face the pain and distress of a world where things come out wrong, where I am incapable of being honest about my state of mind without trying to make a joke about it or worrying that the other person will hate me for it.

To sum up, if you have googled me and found this, please don't hate me for it. I am shit in real life, and I feel like here I am marginally better. I make time for it.

I... I am not sure quite what I'm trying to say.