A few years back when I was a technical recruiter, we’d get a few consultants who had been around for awhile and weren’t keen on giving away much information on themselves. One guy refused to give out his social security number.   At that time, I remember having empathy for them and respect for their privacy but I didn’t think much more about it. Except, of course, when their requests hindered me from being able to do my job (like turn in paperwork to prove they were U.S. Citizens, etc.) and then I thought of them as pains in my glutemous.

It rained most of the day today which gave my hubby and I a great reason to hunker down and watch movies. One of them was “Erasing David”  which is documentary about privacy, surveillance and the database state.   Having grown up in a household with a father who had a job with, shall we say, “the government”….I felt that the main character of the documentary sure did a lousy job of trying not to be found for 30 days (he was found after 18).  For one thing, he threw away basic documents such as bus and train tickets that any good investigator would find after going through his trash.

The documentary did ask a good question to make us ponder about just how much information we put out there on a daily basis that can be used to invade our privacy.  Not to mention how we live fairly transparent lives in the online world where many of us ignore the fact that people, artificial intelligence, and search engines are collecting all kinds of data on us all the time and storing it for future use.  Hope I’m not making you paranoid but rather helping you to think about what kind of information you’re giving and who is using it.

As much as I want to be recognized for my writing and things I do to try to help make this world a better place, there is also a part of me who understands how vulnerable we all are by revealing so much of ourselves and hoping for the best.  I’m grateful we didn’t have access to the internet, texting or social networks when I was younger because I know I would have left very inappropriate blueprints of myself all over the place. Besides, it did my soul good to find relief by staring at the clouds floating by overhead instead of texting or dropping down the rabbit hole to find relief from my teenage anxt.

Anyway, as you can see the paranoid side of my brain got stimulated today!  I do have just a little bit more empathy for friends of mine who live very public lives and crave their privacy, especially those who are married to spouses who scramble for the spotlight.

If you could get lost and go anyplace in the world today, where would you go and why? (hypothetically speaking of course!)