All this self-awareness is making me woozy

Descartes might disagree with me here, but it seems to me the only real way to prove you exist is to Google yourself.

I've been musing a bit about the nature of this. It all seems a little too repetitive. A little too egocentric. A little too silly. I like to pretend that this journal's purpose is to share myself and my thoughts with the rest of the world, but really? It's just for me. Honestly, I probably don't care what you made for dinner last night, so why should I expect anything different from you? (Just how self absorbed can this get? Here I am, blogging about the nature of my own blog.)

But without so-called-social-media one starts to disappear. It starts with being left out of parties that everyone else was invited to on facebook, it continues with never being talked to because you don't have a phone, and it ends with being left out of history because you left no digital record. It seems that the more photos and tweets there are out there, the smaller the Orwellian memory hole becomes, but the easier it is to fall into. All you have to do is stay offline.

I guess the whole reason for updating the world on my dinners and weekends is that I lack a sense of purpose. I started blogging while in Bulgaira, volunteering for the Peace Corps. I felt that was worth writing about. Maybe that's why I still make vague reference to it so often. I'm trying to reconnect with a time worth blogging about. (This is the new standard for meaning, "Is it worth blogging about?")

My head is filled with these thoughts in part because my good friend Seth is leaving for Germany today for another year. He started a new blog. There's something about the challenges of living overseas that just seem worth reading and writing about. It makes you grow.

But alas, I cannot allow myself to slip down the memory hole, I have to prove I exist somehow.

Still, Google ergo sum just doesn't have the same ring to it.