Tuesday, November 20, 2012

On the Organizing of One's Internets

So, I've been using the internet for, rather a long time. Made a facebook in January, 2009; posted my first blog post here in April of the same. Long time. Joined inkpop around the same time, and when it transferred to Figment, so did I.
Towards the beginning, I didn't really have a plan. New blog idea? Make a new Google account. You want my real name? Sure, here you go. Who would want to go looking for me? What harm could it do? Lose your Twitter password again? Just make a new account! Didn't think my usernames through, didn't occur to me that I might not eventually love these book or television characters enough to want to be called by their names on the internet. And, never dreamt of the inconvenience going by a billion different names could cause when you want to connect with the same group of people across more than one website. Basically, I made a royal mess, with more email addresses, passwords, and usernames than anyone should need. Managed to keep up with it all for this long, but no longer.
Because, here lately, it's been driving me nuts. On top of Facebook and Blogger and Figment, there's the other writing website for fanfiction, the joys of Tumblr, and all the different uses for Twitter. Plus, Google accounts started linking up with Google+ accounts, which one doesn't really want more than one of, especially not in one's own name, largely because, like I've always said, I don't really want people I know reading this blog!
It was time for a change, and I knew it, but the final straw was when the email address I've been using since I was thirteen went defunct. That was when I HAD to do something. So I spent the better part of a day reading Google help articles, combing through Youtube histories, arguing with Google Drive over letting me have my files, getting into ancient accounts to change email addresses and usernames; and by the end of the day I'd deleted four various accounts and organized everything into two very neat ones.
Why two? Because I'm about to be a missionary. Missionaries, as a rule, need some kind of support; and nothing helps support along like emotionally compelling blogs and twitter feeds about, well, what I'm up to (bonus points if you're a fantastic photographer and post pictures of the grinning faces of children you've been ministering to). I know that sounds cynical, but it's just the truth. I need to be track-able, to a certain extent, by people in my real life, and I have to have a way keep them updated with what I'm doing. So, the real me now has an internet presence, woohoo.
However, I don't want everything to happen under that 'me.' I still want to keep my writing and my Tumblring, as well as this, my personal blog, separate from all of that! Thus, person number two was born. The screen name that's been slowly taking over that side of my internet usage, is the name that I'm posting under now: Zoie. It's the pen-name I use on every writing website, every just-for-fun website that I've got a profile on. So, from now on, it's the name I'm posting under here, as well.
Thanks for your patience as I've been trying to figure this all out, for your indulgence as I try to change this from a fourteen-year-old drama queen's rantings, to a proper, grown-up blog-about-things, and your tolerance as I try to figure out just what, exactly, I want to call myself.

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