Setting Personal Privacy Levels

When I chose to write this blog, I knew that it would mean sharing myself with an adoring readership (yes, I am that delusional!).  I also knew that some of my stories would in their very nature bring up my boyfriend.  His privacy therefore became a concern for me.  He is unbelievably supportive of everything I do, and I wanted to make sure he was comfortable with all of this. I asked him how he wanted to be referenced in the blog.  He thought of it and said, “By pseudonym.”  That seemed more than fair.  And he wanted final approval of said pseudonym.  Also fair.

So what do I choose?  Since this discussion was immediately after he had been able to single-handedly fix my washer/drier (who can repair stuff these days?!?!?!?), my first thought was Mr. Awesome because, well, he is.  Yet when I told him how awesome he is, his response was, “Well, I just Googled it.”  So then Mr. Humble popped to mind.  And he is definitely humble.

Mr. Humble fits better with his personality, but Mr. Awesome is just so accurate.  What to choose? While I really want Mr. A, I decided on Mr. H.  I could imagine him feeling SO embarrassed when I’m accepting the award for “Best Blog about Tammy” (without delusions of grandeur, what grandeur would I have?) and he has to admit he’s Mr. Awesome.  Nope, Mr. Humble it is.

So after going through this whole process, I told him what I had selected and how I had selected it in elaborate detail – stick figure diagrams may have been involved – and asked his opinion.  He looked at me, gave me his “I’m up to something mischievous” grin and said, “That’s Dr. Humble to you!”  That’s it!   “Dr. Humble To You” (or for the sake of brevity DH2U) is his pseudonym!

For those of you who know DH2U, please help me keep his anonymity.  If you do know him, how well do you think it fits?  For everyone else — crickets– how do you cope with the lack of privacy on the internet?

Also, did everyone know that LinkedIn has pulled a Facebook?  They changed their privacy settings and opted everyone in to allowing their likeness to be used on internet ads.  Follow these steps by Big Impact to get it back to how it should be.  This has been a public service announcement of Grown Up, Now What?  We now return you to surfing the web.