Update: Or, I guess, there’s the “doesn’t work, but doesn’t break anything option…”

Like… well, it was bad, anyway.

Really bad. Shocking, even. It still turns my stomach a little to think about it.

But I won’t get into it, tempting though it is.

In any event, for a long time now (three years, give or take), I had a system of fairly extensive and effective (or at least annoying) restrictions in place which, at least most of the time, made it difficult for this person to peek in on my public private life via the window I’ve opened here. It wasn’t impossible, and sometimes they got around it (note to grammar Nazis: I’m using “they” to avoid revealing gender. I know it’s incorrect. So bite me ), or at least someone from their residence did, but it did mean I didn’t have to think about it or let it occupy my head space.

It was actually a surprisingly effective technique, since my goal was not to be bothered, and it withstood a number of laughable measures ^[1] to circumvent it in spite of occasional breaches.

The cat and mouse maintenance had dwindled to once a month (almost like clockwork), and I didn’t really think about it unless I checked server logs.

But I found the 15 minutes of being bothered by knowing about the (IMHO pretty insolent) intrusion once a month was a sharp twinge of negativity in my otherwise pretty cool life.

For a long time, my reaction to this silliness was to batten down the hatches tighter, but you know what?

Screw it.

I have a nice life. I am going to say what I want to say without worrying about what one silly person is going to get upset over, even if it gets exaggerated, blown out of proportion, even lied about and passed on to people in the worst possible way to make for the greatest impact.

That isn’t my problem.

It’s a shame, and it’s kind of sad, but it isn’t my problem.

And so, instead, I took off the restrictions altogether.

This isn’t an invitation to dialogue. It certainly isn’t an invitation to repeat the kind of behavior that caused me to put on the restrictions in the first place.

But it is freeing up some of my head space which, frankly, should belong to me.

Call it growing up.

1. ^[1] hidemyass.com, for example, does not, in fact, do so ↩

(Sorry R.S., couldn’t resist on that last one…)

A hint to all you future parents out there: the sleep deprivation and time crunch you will experience after the birth of your child does not help this situation. I think I may need to place a disclaimer on all of my e-mails telling readers to contact my son if the contents are nonsensical, unreadable, or otherwise completely messed up.

So here we have a test of the emergency do-what-I-want-with-photos system (which, for the record, does not seem altogether promising):

(Now with the little boys’ haircut I had hoped he’d never have, hereafter to be referred to as the “Bavarian Bruiser” (though there’s nothing Bavarian about it other than it happened here ) )

Ok, time to publish and hope for the best…

Boo.