I always feel like somebody's watching me...

I'm sure everyone has done it at least once since they have discovered the joys of the internet. Admit it; you have Googled yourself at least once. At least.

It came up as a random topic of conversation in the office today so sure enough we all looked ourselves up on Google for an update. I had not looked at my results for quite some time so I was surprised to see the very first match was for a site I had never heard of before.

It gave me goosebumps when I clicked on the link. I would like to think that I am fairly savvy when it comes to protecting my privacy online. When news comes around of new sites gathering information and compiling them per person I do my best to make sure my details are masked and such...but this one was new. Sure, it had my age wrong and it was pretty obvious it had gathered a lot of my info off of the major-social-media-site-which-will-remain-unnamed, but yet there I was in fairly legitimate print. Chills.

It reminded me (very much so) about all my celebrity boy crushes when I was young. I still have my binder tucked away in my closet - every single photo and article I could find on my favorite actors. And where articles became repetitive I opted to TYPE out a huge point-form file on each guy, complete with subject headers. Pages and pages and pages of the trivial and mundane.

By the way, Jonathan Brandis' (RIP) first car was a Nissan Maxima.

PLEASE don't call me a stalker. I just Googled that bit of J.B. trivia and it turns out I was not alone out there with regards to people who felt this factoid about him was worth noting.

Which is why this new site freaked me out; I am faaaaaar from being a major celebrity but any soul curious enough to dig for some info on me does not have to try very hard. They don't have to bribe any governmental institutions to read about me. It's like "Creeping for Dummies."

A major reason why this is all so concerning to me is I met an uber passive-aggressive guy last year who still seems to think there's a chance I'll change my mind and run back to him. By no means am I trying to convey some kind of attitude that I think I'm hot sh!t but when a guy finds you on three (3!) different networks and tries to contact you via every single one of them then I suppooooose he's trying pretty hard.

But when the attention is unwanted it is all. too. creepy.

And now my blog - which has always been of great comfort to me - is seeing increased hits locally. Sure, it could just be my friends. They used to read this on the regular. But we all know my poor little blog has not seen a whole lot of action even from yours truly these past couple of years. The pessimist in me wants to put two and two together and figure it's mr passive-aggressive reading up on me way too much.

So if I think the new found attention is so creepy then why am I writing about it on here? Savvy question. Giving whoever-this-is some acknowledgment in my blog kind of validates that his behavior is achieving some kind of result, no? Bad move? I guess what I am doing by directing some light on the situation is hoping *fingers crossed* that if it IS a good friend or anyone other than mr p-a that they'll just let me know they've been around...it sure would ease a lot of my discomfort. I refuse to scrap my blog - I do not want to play victim to my own paranoia - but if I absolutely have to, common sense would tell me just to flip the switch on my thoughts and make them private.