2001-06-29 - 11:56 p.m.

Sometimes I'll be thinking about something odd, and it will almost completely take over my consciousness to the point that I basically stop what I'm doing. I don't mean like I do all of the steps to bring whatever I was doing to an end, I just completely stop paying attention to it. If I'm reading I don't put a bookmark in the book and set it down, I keep staring at the spot where the book was, my hands drop, the book falls out of my hands, and I don't notice for a while.

Today I was riding home from A.I. when this happened today. I was riding rather quickly down a hill, standing on the pedals when suddenly the train of thought going through my head completely took over. Fortunately, my brain does have a bit of an autopilot that keeps me from getting myself killed. I dropped onto the seat, my left foot slipped off the pedal so it was resting with the calf laying on the pedal, scraping against the ground. I just kept thinking the whole time, until my foot scraped and stopped moving and the pedal dug into the back of my leg just enough to drag me back into the real world.

But anyway, what I was thinking about was how my diary has changed over the past months. I've been writing here since October 6th, 2000. When I started it I was writing about random things I think about during the day. If I wrote about actual things that happened during the day, it was to segue into something I was thinking about, kinda like I'm doing right now. But now, when I write, sometimes I write about what's going on in my life just because people are interested in it.

But that's the thing that suddenly grabbed onto my brain today as I sped down the hill at about twenty miles an hour with nothing between me and the ground but a few metal bars (notoriously bad at balancing on their own without supports), about a centimeter of cloth, and a thick plastic-y type thing strapped onto my head known as a helmet. People are interested. People I have never met in real life (and a few I have), are interested in what is going on in my life. *Online* I haven't even talked to everyone who pays attention to my life.

So rather then when this started and I could write about anything I wanted and massively important things could happen in my life without having a mention in here and no one would care, now I get people all the time asking me, "Dave, did you actually quit your job? Did you get the bank job? You still single?" All of which I can now answer with a simple "yes." But the point is, people want to know.

Now, I'm not saying this to be cocky. My point is, it happens to plenty of people in Diaryland. People, for some reason, find a diary that they click with and they read it and start to become interested in the person. Even if they have never talked to them in real life or online, they still feel like they know the person.

I realized how strange this was when I imagined stepping back and looking at what I would see if I knew me only through Diaryland. I would see nothing but words on a screen. Text. A whole person, just like the many I've befriended and learned to care about a lot, built from nothing but dots on a screen forming into words. Occasionally, if you talk to me in chat, you might see a picture or two of me. But even there, if it was someone else, seeing a single picture of someone in chat, it could actually be a picture of anyone else. I haven't talked to this person in real life, I don't know they aren't just giving me a picture of some random person, there's no reason anyone should trust me to not do the same thing. Well, other than the fact that I'm a trustworthy person.

People pay attention to my life. People want to know what's going on with me. People I don't even know. That feels good.

And for those of you who just love to read about my reflections on my jobs, I'm starting an all new one on Monday. We'll see how it goes.