Almost a part of me.
Perhaps it's not exactly under my skin, but there's no doubt that it's much more than almost a part of me. Every day we brush our teeth, we have our cup of coffee, we read the newspaper. Numerous behaviors repeat themselves throughout the day and throughout our lives in general, and these not only become "part of us" - they make up who we are. And who am I? To a great extent I'm the person who writes these columns.
That doesn't mean that others (all eight of them?) identify me as such; only that I identify myself in that way. A snippet of information finds its way to my inbox and something clicks and I say "that's for a future column". While browsing (for fun, if not for profit) I happen upon something that I know I have to bookmark in my "for the boidem" folder. A pop-up ad winks at me and suggests that it's what I've been looking for as an example of a particular phenomenon. Of course all of us do this all of the time. We're constantly sifting through information and cataloging it for future use, all the while trying to make sense out of it, and permitting it to influence us. It both reinforces and reinterprets what we know. Some of us choose to report on that process. What interests me here isn't the process itself, but the fact that although I have numerous frames of reference - work, family, political affiliation and more, these columns remain a major focus in how I filter the information that I encounter.
Go to: Get a Life!