It's hard to type with a cat on your desk
Sep. 26th, 2002 05:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
triskellianHide and seek is over. I've found both my best friends, and they've both found me, although I told one of them outright what my username was. In fact, I told both of them: one just forgot. A Friends chain now links me to the other people I know on here, so I can't help but feel differently about this journal. Not *bad* different: after all, if the intention was for no one to ever read this, it wouldn't be online at all. But the short weeks of no one reading, and of being free to write anything are gone. One edit is friends only now, and I'll probably delete it before too long. Or at least move it somewhere else.
I do have another online diary. Contrary to what I said above about them, it's not intended for anyone to read. Probably not ever. Maybe I should re-write the earlier statement and say something about how I wouldn't be writing under such an obvious pseud if I wasn't intending to be found. Practically anyone who knows me will recognise this name as me as soon as they see it.
I'm not quite sure how the split between this journal and the other one will work. There isn't much I'm not public about, but it's the things I don't talk about that I'm most likely to write about - it's just another way of thinking about them.
The game of hide and seek made me think about them more than usual. My best friend lives an entirely separate life on the web. She hardly interacts with her real life friends at all, and she chose her LJ username deliberately to minimise the chances of RL friends finding her. She gave me implicit permission to look for her, with various conditions attached, and I don't know if she was expecting to be found or not. I went gaily off, doing interest searches, trying to find an interest of hers with few enough users that reading through the names was practical. I was confident I'd recognise her username as soon as I saw it, despite being told that she'd made a new one and didn't think I would.
The thing is, we talk about names. It's a subject of general fascination to both of us. I know her usual net pseuds, I've run a roleplaying game with her, and I've read all of her books. I *know* how she names things. In the end, I did recognise the name instantly, although she had to tell me a list it appeared in. But it wasn't anything I could have guessed if I hadn't seen it. I could have written possible names for pages and pages, and it would never appear, but, although I'd read the journals of lots of possibles while looking for her, I didn't even need to read the journal to know it was her. The username alone did it.
My other best friend was much more tricksy. I know less about how she names things, and I knew both of her usual pseuds were taken. I had a clue from her as well, about the category of name she'd used, but it turned out to fit the criteria I'd been looking for, and to appear in an interest list I'd already read through, so I'm rather gutted that if I'd been paying more attention, I'd have found her without needing a clue. She only had one, very short, journal entry to read to confirm the choice (I needed to read to confirm, with her), but either the subject or the mood icon would have done it alone. Well, OK, maybe not *just* the mood icon, but I'd have been looking for counter evidence, and expecting to find none, if I'd just had the icon and the username to go on.
So, some strange unconscious association of ideas and usernames with one and a song lyric with the other, was enough to tell me who they were.
My name: I was in Brittany on holiday as a child. I was maybe twelve, I'm not sure. I bought a necklace with a Celtic symbol made out of three horseshoe nails, hanging from a leather thong. That's it. The source of the triskell thing. I lost the original triskell, and two different people replaced it for me, and a few years ago, my brother in law bought me a silver necklace with a triskell pendant for Christmas, completely coincidentally, so now I have three. If you count the tattoo, I have four. It's my symbol as well as one of my names.
I do have another online diary. Contrary to what I said above about them, it's not intended for anyone to read. Probably not ever. Maybe I should re-write the earlier statement and say something about how I wouldn't be writing under such an obvious pseud if I wasn't intending to be found. Practically anyone who knows me will recognise this name as me as soon as they see it.
I'm not quite sure how the split between this journal and the other one will work. There isn't much I'm not public about, but it's the things I don't talk about that I'm most likely to write about - it's just another way of thinking about them.
The game of hide and seek made me think about them more than usual. My best friend lives an entirely separate life on the web. She hardly interacts with her real life friends at all, and she chose her LJ username deliberately to minimise the chances of RL friends finding her. She gave me implicit permission to look for her, with various conditions attached, and I don't know if she was expecting to be found or not. I went gaily off, doing interest searches, trying to find an interest of hers with few enough users that reading through the names was practical. I was confident I'd recognise her username as soon as I saw it, despite being told that she'd made a new one and didn't think I would.
The thing is, we talk about names. It's a subject of general fascination to both of us. I know her usual net pseuds, I've run a roleplaying game with her, and I've read all of her books. I *know* how she names things. In the end, I did recognise the name instantly, although she had to tell me a list it appeared in. But it wasn't anything I could have guessed if I hadn't seen it. I could have written possible names for pages and pages, and it would never appear, but, although I'd read the journals of lots of possibles while looking for her, I didn't even need to read the journal to know it was her. The username alone did it.
My other best friend was much more tricksy. I know less about how she names things, and I knew both of her usual pseuds were taken. I had a clue from her as well, about the category of name she'd used, but it turned out to fit the criteria I'd been looking for, and to appear in an interest list I'd already read through, so I'm rather gutted that if I'd been paying more attention, I'd have found her without needing a clue. She only had one, very short, journal entry to read to confirm the choice (I needed to read to confirm, with her), but either the subject or the mood icon would have done it alone. Well, OK, maybe not *just* the mood icon, but I'd have been looking for counter evidence, and expecting to find none, if I'd just had the icon and the username to go on.
So, some strange unconscious association of ideas and usernames with one and a song lyric with the other, was enough to tell me who they were.
My name: I was in Brittany on holiday as a child. I was maybe twelve, I'm not sure. I bought a necklace with a Celtic symbol made out of three horseshoe nails, hanging from a leather thong. That's it. The source of the triskell thing. I lost the original triskell, and two different people replaced it for me, and a few years ago, my brother in law bought me a silver necklace with a triskell pendant for Christmas, completely coincidentally, so now I have three. If you count the tattoo, I have four. It's my symbol as well as one of my names.
