eCache

The Art of Mystery

In Esquire, S.T. VanAirsdale argued recently that we’re on the cusp of a rebellion against over-exposed celebrities: that tomorrow’s stars will not be Twitter-whores like Bieber and Gaga but virtual recluses in the mould of Greta Garbo and JD Salinger. If that’s true – that fame and fortune will soon be inversely proportional to social media exposure – then God help someone like me: someone who can only dream of the level of success attained by Salinger or, uh, Bieber.

The above was written by Paul Carr at TechCrunch as he explains why he shut down all his social media accounts (save Twitter). The gist of the article is that sharing all the nuances to our lives as we do with social media removes the mystery of the person. Doing so actually clues in the reader that the person is no one special.

If you’re one of the three people in the world not already following Kutcher (I’m another), then take a moment to browse his latest tweets: with every 140 character nugget, Kutcher becomes less ‘social-media savvy husband of Demi Moore who was in that show once’ and more ‘over-enthusiastic teenager with a cellphone’. The more we know, the less we want to know.

It occurred to me as I read this that I expressed this same sentiment previously.

Before I ceased logging online, I wrote logs that detailed a bumbling cacher fortunate to find his way home, let alone a cache. While that was factual, the emphasis of the logs were on the misfortunes I encountered. There was anonymity at that time. It was fun and there was some back-and-forth play in the logs with other unknown cachers.

All that changed once I met the caching community. Prior to the first event I attended, I had met but a couple folks on the trail. When I walked into the Burger King people called me by name.

The “magic” of geocaching wore off for me the moment I attended my first event. That goes a long way to explaining why I do not attend many events these days.

It is true I shared a photograph of me at each cache site with my logs, but I was unknown to everyone personally. When I walked into the Burger King, everyone knew me. While that did in fact freak me out, it was the popping of the mystery that occurred. I felt as though, perhaps incorrectly, that I could no longer write the kinds of logs folks had read from me personally.

I longed to be that mysterious guy that puzzled folks. Ken thought I was some old man from my logs. Ha! I recall some interplay with StayFloopy in the logs. But as soon as I presented myself, well yeah, the fun was gone.

As folks learned, I have an opinion. And then I was asked for it. And of course, it didn’t jive with other people’s opinions. And then there was turmoil. Sigh . . . And what was once fun and exciting, became a chore.

It took some time to get over it all . . . longer perhaps than I realized/wanted. Now I participate totally unbeknownst to anyone. It has to be that way. The audience is gone and so it the mystery. It had to be.

Back to Carr’s premise, I am going through many of the same inclinations. This blog has always been the anchor for what I do. It is me and mine. It is not dependent on others, although I welcome those who visit. I realized some time ago it is my outlet for things. If it suits the reader, have at it. If not, I will walk alone . . . publicly. This is what keeps me accountable for what I say.

Some pop in and hang for a while, but most move on eventually. That is fine. That is how I am approaching many social media these day. I struggle with Facebook. Just what am I supposed to be doing there? It seems to me it mirrors the stereotypical high school mentality. Folks who knew me in high school understand I was never part of the crowd. I have signed up for nearly every social media service there is. I have drawn back on most. Sharing my software use is not something meaningful for me, for instance.

I am not giving it all up, but I am rethinking my participation. I finally got accustomed to Yelp, after shunning it for a long time. It looks, however, I am jumping on as Foursquare/Google is about to launch to bury the service. It would be typical.

And that is why my blog is so special to me. It is the one service that will not go away, unless I pull the plug on it. Do we truly see Twitter being the focus a decade from now?

Anyhow, I sympathize with those who want to be less public online. I am never going to be a mover and shaker in the world. I am a father, husband, and teacher. That is important enough for me.

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Progress

Every summer I tackle projects. In my single days I took on learning CGI, Perl, and Java. These days it is more stuff for the family. There were four main projects to accomplish:

1. Finish organizing the photographs in order to create Fritz’s videos
2. Enter our books into GoodReads; abandon Selfari
3. Hold a yard sale to clear out what we have been piling up to get rid of
4. Re-tool my science lesson plans

Fritz is almost three-and-a-half. Since before he turned one I have been hearing about how I needed to create videos of him. Yearly, I have made a video of Beetle . . . or at least I did until the boy came around. Two children put a crimp on making videos.

Whenever Gert wants to get a dig in at me, she would slip in that she doesn’t have videos of her son. Sigh . . .

So I began tackling the mounds of CDs that hold the photographs. Since Fritz was born there has been a computer change and a domain change. All that added to the unorganization of the files. I was hopeful the photographs would be done by the end of June, but it didn’t happen.

I am a completist, so I didn’t want to begin the videos until all the photographs were organized. But I grew very tired of that task. I got most of it done. I have pretty much everything from his lifetime done. But I have all these older photographs, many of them geocaching photographs that I took with my old Kodak DC120. The photographs taken with that camera do not contain EXIF data. Furthermore, over the years I practiced some bad practices. I regularly discarded the original .KDC files in favor of re-sized .jpg images. But I was not consistent with that. Some .jpgs are in the original size and I have some of the original .KDC files. These are in directory after directory, often named geocaching. And if that isn’t enough, they often have different file names within those directories.

It’s a mess. I tire of going through these directories and researching the same geocaches from years ago. So I stopped.

I moved onto the books. I had a good rhythm going initially, but I stopped them as well. I tackled one of Fritz’s videos. Yes, indeed. I cranked one out. Gert was so pleased. His first year in 20 minutes, all set to music. The monkey got off my back somewhat.

I returned to the books a little more. Then vacation-mode truly sank in. We had company, we had events, we went to Florida.

And in all this I picked up another project. While wallowing with all the books, I discovered my CD collection. That sparked an idea. Off I went and purchased another TB hard drive. What I thought would be a couple days ripping the collection has turned into nearly three weeks (albeit with a trip to Florida thrown in). I now have it all ripped and artwork associated wit each song. In addition, I have most of the Grateful Dead (and derivatives) I attended on the hard drive with art too.

Feeling pretty good about things, last night Gert made a snide comment about missing videos. Grrr . . . today I cranked them out. But the good thing is that I am done. Woo hoo!

Now back to the books before I tackle the science lesson plans next week. Then it will be time for school. Gert and I have tentatively picked a date for the yard sale too. Things are coming together.

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Recognition

Samuel Beckett wrote a play called Not I. There are but two characters in the play: a mouth and a knee. The mouth provides all the dialogue. The knee bends at times to respond to what the mouth prattles about. One of the themes of the play is that we all need confirmation to exist. What happens if the knee leaves?

In recent days I have had some recognition. It is nice when it happens.

Joshua Barnes is an Australian author. He is currently writing another barbecue book. He asked to use several of my photographs for his new book.

David Seow is a children’s book author from Singapore. He and I “met” online through some podcasts. He sent a couple of his books to my children, autographed even. They are quite good. There are themes in them that I will use as examples with my students.

The other day after I drove two days from Florida, I unpacked the Jeep, and then pulled out the mower. We had been away more than a week and the grass needed to be mowed. As I was finishing up, a lady walked by with a dog. She asked me what I did to make my lawn look so nice. She said she had lawn envy.

It’s nice to be recognized. It lifts the spirit. Each of these events meant a lot to me.

I’ve been enamored with the story of Pay It Forward, so much so that briefly I posted to this blog as Eugene Simonet. Anyhow, in an effort to pay forward the compliments allow me to say:

Carl Johnson has been doing excellent work fixing up his house. He has re-sanded the floors and stained them. The hardest physical work I have ever done was to re-do a floor. His results look excellent. Good job, Carl.

Now, pay it forward . . .

Update
I was reminded that I was also praised by my sister for helping her with smoking. It apparently made enough of an impression that my nephew has expressed an interest in developing the art/skill too. It’s been a good week or two.

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Dot . . . Dot . . . Dot . . .

The other day as I walked out of BJ’s someone was grinding coffee. I am not a coffee drinker but my did that smell good. I overheard a couple walking nearby say the same thing . . . It was nice to read that NJMP gave Cumberland County residents free admission to the weekend’s events a couple weeks back. We were set to go, but the thought of being out in an open space with a heat index of 107 was enough to remain near water all day . . . Time with family this week has been precious . . . Need to wrap up some projects I have going this week so I can get in work mode next week. I have lesson plans on my mind . . . Finally came to the decision I need to do something about my weight. What I will do, I am not certain . . . My daughter is a reader. It makes me so proud. She read to me a poem from A.A. Milne’s Now We Are Six Her grandmother had read it to her earlier . . . As I spoke with my mother today, it dawned on me that there are more Fox News personalities that bother me than I like. Dick Morris, Glenn Beck, Geraldo Rivera, Sean Hannity, Greta Van Susteren, Mike Huckabee, Gretchen Carlson, Bernie Goldberg, Marc Lamont Hill, Ralph Peters, etc. . . . Does anyone know what happened to Utterli (Utterz)? . . . Starting to ponder my own mortality . . . There is something about routine that makes one long for it . . . I keep trying to figure out the purpose of Facebook. Other than frivolity, I can’t come up with one . . .

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Almost Done

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