Thinking about etiquette, especially of the internet variety.

Things I know:
-it is not polite to comment anonymously on a blog that isn't privacy conscious, it also is not polite to comment publicly on an anonymous blog.
-it is polite to link back to other bloggers you refer to.
-it is polite to comment on a fellow blogger's comment on my blog.


Things I am not sure of:
-how much do I say about a fellow blogger when I link back to them.
-what is appropriate to comment on others' blogs.
-if or how I can send an 'I miss hearing from you, how is it going?' message to someone I enjoy reading.
-can I message people at strange hours, are they going to get annoying beeps etc in the middle of the night.

I know I am totally over thinking this. It is all very random. If I want to get my messages right away I leave my email open, if I don't want to be disturbed I close everything down. I know I would love to get a random message from someone to see how life is. But I value my anonymity, I don't want everyone to know who I am.

I think now I am going to talk a little about anonymity.

Where I work everyone knows my name. Mostly because of my position, I get paged quite a lot. And lots of people get referred to me, 'go ask Bubbles, she can help you', the part that really drives me crazy is that all these people know my name and I only know them by their department. I have tried to get to know everyone's name, I get them all mixed up and call people by the wrong name, it was very embarassing so I gave that up. But once in a while it is nice when someone asks for my name. This happened last night. Our store is renovating so there is a construction crew around all the time. I am getting to know some of them by face and to say hello. Well, I got a flat tire last night and one of the guys pointed it out to me, and wanted to help me get it sorted out. He actually didn't know my name and asked for it, introducing himself at the same time. It was so refreshing, that there are people who don't know my name.

This all sounds really silly to me. It is my name. I have it for a reason, as a society we use names to identify. But my feelings are: that it is my name and I should get to choose who knows it.

Makes me think of that Brad Paisley song 'online' 

How much pressure there is by society to portray the best of yourself at all times, even if it is not entirely true.