In the weirdest mood tonight–got a good relaxing CD from someone I know from school, and listened to it earlier today.  Then later I was cleaning out a cabinet when I found a paper that contained a livejournal username of a friend from high school.  Just spent the last hour or so reading through all her old posts going back to freshman year.  So many things I never knew, so many that I figured out later, and so much youthful drama.  I really felt like I was back in high school for a few minutes, until I started to write this post and looked at the name on the CD.

I hadn’t spent much time thinking about high school in forever.  Not sure if I’m glad or sorry that I don’t have a blog/journal from that time to look back on.  It would be interesting to see how my thoughts and beliefs had developed over time, but I’m glad that I didn’t start my public blog until a few years later.

I was about to make the statemnt that I felt the person who started this blog is the same person I am now, but as I started to make the case, I realize that that is not the case at all. I have made quite a dramatic transition in the four years since this blog was started, (although two of them are not represented here).  It’s just not as striking publicly as was the transition I made in the 4 years before that, and I know it isn’t very well represented on the blog.  (There’s a lot of things I never posted about.)

I guess the reason I brought this up is because I’ve been applying for jobs, and I’ve heard so much about being careful of your online presence, in regards to what a future employer of client might think.  And I recall hearing a news story about how Obama is vetting all his advisors, and one of the questions is about everything they’ve ever posted online.  So I’ve been thinking off and on about what I’ve written, and how I’m represented.  I don’t think there’s really too much to be ashamed about–I’ve always been pretty reserved about what I’ve posted, and honestly, I’m not a person who’s prone to doing stupid things in the first place, much less posting the evidence of such hijinks.

In fact, I’m not sure if there’s a single thing that I’ve done that I would need to disclose.  Sure, there’s a lot of personal things that might be embarrassing on a personal level, and plenty of silly/crazy things that have been done with friends that don’t really make sense, but I can’t think of anything I’ve done (public or private) that I would absolutely never want to disclose.  And to my knowledge, none of the deeply embarrassing things are even disclosed on this blog.

I guess that’s the thing I was trying to express about the blog earlier–that by starting later, there was considerably more restraint in what was posted in the first place.  I’m not sure that my friend would disown the 15 year old version of herself, but some of her thoughts and rantings might prove to be a mite embarrassing if brought up in the right context…

I don’t envy the next generation, who have years of myspace and Facebook postings dating back to long before they had an adult level of maturity about what to post.