So I've been cleaning up my online presence.
This wasn't triggered by anything besides a distinct feeling that I've left an awful lot of breadcrumbs all over the Internet. My main email address apparently gets published on the dark web several times a year. I was a very late adopter of password management software (and of course I picked LastPass, a company that has proven to be Very Responsible With My Data); even so, I have over 400 passwords in my vault. I explore a lot, and try a lot of things, and forget or lose interest in a lot of stuff, and just generally haven't been cleaning up after myself. So I figured I'd start.
It did not take long for me to rediscover some Interesting Things about my past self. For example, did you know I used to draw art? Like, real art? Like, good??? art??? I co-hosted a writing-related podcast with my sister for a while. I had an idea/very vague plan to organize and run an indie game demo kiosk in the mall. I have to-do list items from five years ago that I don't even understand anymore.
I think a lot about the Ship of Theseus. I am invested in the idea that there is such a thing as a separate consciousness, a "me." That people are composed of all the information about them, from before they were born to after they die. That, if you copied me perfectly and killed me, I would be dead and in my place would be a second person who was very, very similar to me. That I, as a person, am both present-me and past-me and, if there is one, future-me.
But sometimes I wonder. How important are the traces of the shiplap boards that got replaced? How long do those traces last, really?
Anyway I'm getting a new car tomorrow so that's pretty neat