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Infamy

Writing this blog is always an interesting act of duality. I hate the thought of attention whoring, but I still find it incredibly amusing to share anecdotes about this life of mine. So, I write in a way to avoid names, but I still have no qualms about making my life something of an open book (er, tri-fold). I happily continue to churn out posts, but it's not like I'll plaster "look everybody, new post!" all over social media to promote myself. So, really, I end up compartmentalizing things. Writing about stuff exists in one bucket, and actual social interaction with people exists in a separate bucket.

Every now and then, though, the two buckets mix. Usually this involves friends of mine, but the results are always interesting. The first time this happened, I was hanging out with some friends, and their friends. I happened to write about it a little while later, so the people I knew were amused to read about it. In fact, they were amused enough to pass along a link to the other people who were there. The way the story was told to me, one of them was so amused, he went back to read all of the blog posts, and he ended up forming a favorable opinion as a result. It was a little trippy, but somebody I barely knew now thought I was funny. I'll take it.

There are also the times when someone has read something on this blog, and it leads to an inside joke. I was walking back to work with a friend of mine the other day, and we had to get from the first floor to the fourth floor. Now, I like to take the stairs, and I also tend to avoid the staircase close to the women's bathroom. Given the direction we were walking, the staircase I avoid happened to be closer. Still, I started taking the longer route instinctively. Confused for a second, my friend thought I wanted to take the elevator. Nope. I think I said something along the lines of, "oh, yeah, want to avoid those stairs. I think you've heard my shpiel on this before, right?" She immediately knew what I was talking about, and proceeded to laugh at me. She did, however, go along with this plan and no one (else) gave me a dirty look, so I'd like to think this was a success.

Both of those instances pale in comparison to the last one, however. Every now and then, there will be someone with a very, very good memory who also happens to read this blog. If I happen to have dinner with such a person, I am very likely to be reminded of a non-trivial portion of my writing. The person might start calling me "Sammy the Hammy," for example (please don't start that). He might also complain that he didn't recognize himself in any of the anonymous anecdotes about my friends, even though he was actually included. Or, it's entirely possible that he will joke that I should watch out for "fancy" websites, and then he'll call BS on me being whimsical (he'd have to have a much different definition of the word than I for this to happen). You know, hypothetically speaking and all.

I actually had to sit and think about what I'd written about, in order to keep up with the conversation about, well, my own writing. It's not like I was stumped at any point; it was about my life, after all. Still, there were a couple of times when it took a second or two for me to remember the particular anecdote/post in question in order to follow the flow of conversation.

All of that brings me back to the title. I think I've attained an iota of infamy as a result of my writing. I'm still trying to decide if this is a good thing or not.

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