Posts Tagged ‘privacy’
Orange Obsession
It has come to my attention that I can obsess with relative ease. Obsession is something I prefer to avoid due to the preoccupation filling a mind constantly and intrusively to a troubling extent. It’s just not mentally healthy.
When a glimpse of blaze orange appeared from our front yard about 45 meters (50 yards) into the woods to our north, Asher and I both took notice. Asher wanted to freeze and stare while I preferred acting nonchalant and continuing as if oblivious.
Once inside, I didn’t hesitate to whip out the binoculars to see if I could verify the possibility there was a hunter crouched beyond a ridge, waiting for a deer to wander close. Unfortunately, I couldn’t improve on the basic perception of a small blob of orange. There was just too much distance for my wimpy binoculars and too many branches or tree trunks obscuring the view.
After staring for far too long in the hope of seeing some movement, I gave up and decided to check back periodically to see if it was still there. Hours eventually turned to days and I was able to convince myself it was not a hunter but more likely a hat or some other article of outdoor clothing that had been dropped and lost.
That didn’t stop me from continuing to look for it every time I walked nearby. I was curious if the hunter would return in search of the lost item, all the while reminding myself that our usual privacy was likely being invaded for random periods during the 8 days of the deer hunting season.
Eventually, enough days passed that I decided to deal with my trending obsession fascination with the blaze-orange object by taking the risk of walking into the neighbor’s woods to see what it was.
It wasn’t a hat. It is a hand warmer with a strap that wraps around the waist to secure it… unless it doesn’t. I would expect the hunter’s hands would get cold enough that he or she would have missed it and retraced steps to retrieve it at some point.
Turning around to look back at our house, I had a renewed sense of weirdness over a person walking so close to our place that is otherwise very secluded.
I picked up the hand warmer and walked a short distance to the plowed field where I hung it up prominently in view for someone to find should they come looking for it.
This morning we heard a couple of close shots from the other side of our property. It has been relatively quiet for the six days between last Saturday morning’s gunshots.
Tomorrow is the last day of the hunt. I look forward to the return of wildlife being the only creatures wandering around in the woods surrounding our house and an end to my seasonal obsession with blaze-orange sightings.
Knowing it’s a hand warmer hanging in some branches at the edge of the woods nearby will help me avoid obsessing over it, but I’ll check occasionally to see if anyone retrieves it.
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Faux Privacy
I have heard it said that I reveal things in my writing here that might be better kept private. Possibly.
Lately, Cyndie and I have experienced a pretty heavy dose of the perception that “Big Brother” is watching, with our activity selling and buying homes. I’m pretty sure I don’t have any privacy.
Long ago I accepted the use of Google’s email service, knowing full-well that my correspondence would be mined for information to use to target the advertising that would appear on my screen. Being the frugal sort, I willingly accepted it as a reality I could exchange for an email service I didn’t need to pay for. I am lucky, in that my eyes rarely stray to the part of the window that displays the ingeniously selected links of advertisers. They are almost always transparent to me during my email activity.
Not long after we listed our house for sale, the junk mail coming to our postal mailbox began to include cards and flyers from moving companies. Yesterday, our cable company sent a notice informing us how to transfer our services seamlessly to our new address. Hmm. We haven’t reported our plans to the cable company yet.
Going through the loan approval process was very revealing, in terms of how much others know about us. The credit bureaus knew more about us than we did about ourselves.
I think concerns about my privacy took the biggest hit when my briefcase, phone, checkbook, iPod, and wallet were stolen out of my car. More than ever before, that was the moment I felt that I no longer controlled information about myself. I created all new accounts, and life went on for me.
I don’t really have anything to hide. That makes a lack of privacy a bit easier to accept. It is a bit startling to one day see the entirety of Google’s list of search terms I have ever used, pop up on screen. “Did I really type those words in a search?” If I did, I did.
When the world finally finds out every little truth about me, I won’t feel like a victim of character assassination. The result will be more a function of character suicide. I am what I am.
Relative Something 