Caveat: The Glass Brain

I have adopted the term "glass brain" for the increasingly common phenomenon of living one's life quite publicly on the internet.  Perhaps this is parallel to the idea of living in a glass house, but without the house – just a brain that anyone can look into. See also, "el licenciado vidriera" – one of my favorite of Cervantes' short stories, which deals with a man who came to believe he was made of glass.

Actually, one can manage one's transparency fairly effectively, for the most part.  If one is careful, which I try to be.  Thus, a great deal of "me" is "out there" in the online world, but it's a pretty-carefully-managed "me" (seasoned with equal doses of sly circumspection and passive-aggressive snarkiness).  I can hide a great deal behind a façade of abstruse vocabulary and sheer volume of apparently random, pseudo-academic, semi-autobiographical blather.

Nevertheless, I've taken what feels like a big step further in the direction of this "managed transparency," recently:  I've submitted this blog to a list called the Korean Blog List.  Apparently the link "went live" sometime in the last 24 hours, because already I've noticed several incoming links.

…And so, behold, after blogging for 5 years (and intensively – daily – for 3 years), I've suddenly made a move which may render this blog much less of a "just for friends and family" than it has been, to date.  We'll see.

Regardless… To my friends and family:  I still view you as my primary audience.  If others are "listening in" that's great.  Perhaps they'll derive some entertainment or insight.  To those listening in:  this is not an effort at journalism.  It's only journaling.  I reserve the right to make stuff up and leave stuff out.  I exist at the center of my own subjectivity, fully aware of that limitation.

Caveat lector:  read at your own risk.   Remember the line at the top:  "재미없으면 보상해드립니다!" ("If it's not fun, we give a refund!") – this is clearly meant ironically, since there's no charge to read this.  Guaranteed refunds on free blogs consist solely in the readers' ability to deftly navigate away from said blogs.  If it's not fun, stop looking.