Rest Easy mr bitterman

At times, writing a blog has been a very frustrating for me. I had kicked around the idea of writing a blog for a long time before we bought the House of 42 Doors, but I couldn't figure out what the blog should be about. I didn't think that my life was interesting enough to start a daily or weekly blog. I was afraid the whole affair would devolve into some form of "Dear Diary, today I had eggs and bacon for breakfast..." I also knew that the little muse in my head that controls writing is bipolar. At times she is maniacal with energy and wit, enough so that I feel jittery and edgy with communicative purpose. Other times, I'm pretty sure she has skipped town to go relax on a sun soaked beach in the South Pacific. At these times, it's not just my ability to write that is affected. I find it difficult to speak in anything other than two syllable words.

And Ms. Huis was doing a fabulous job of keeping people up to date with our lives via her blog or via e-mails. But she didn't cover everything I would have (we ARE two different people after all), and occasionally when my muse was busy applying a vice grip to my creative centers I would start a "posting" that I felt would be my inaugural post. For a long time, I kicked around the idea of a website where my alias was mr. bitterman. As mr. bitterman, I could rant on and on about the injustices of the world. mr. bitterman had opinions on everything. And I had hoped that as mr. bitterman, I could "hide" and actually write about those things that really made me angry. But I'm a computer guy and I know that anonymity is extremely difficult to preserve on the Internet. And I have a strong suspicion that the ability to remain anonymous on the Internet will continue to grow more and more difficult. That coupled with the fact that anything put on the Internet is likely to stay there for a very, very, very long time implies an unknown future impact.

The problem with blogs is that they aren't truly anonymous. All of our friends and family know about this blog and everyone from my boss to my mother-in-law could be reading this. That was one of the advantages of using the House of 42 Doors as a topic. It allows me to focus on one thing and stay out of those things that you don't talk about in polite company, namely sex, politics and religion.

When I went back to Ireland in January, some of my co-workers there mentioned that they had read the blog. I couldn't remember giving the web address to any of them but I must have because they all seemed to know about the House of 42 Doors. Reading a blog does give a certain voyeuristic thrill. But beyond that, I know that some of them had hoped that this blog would give them my "true" thoughts on my time in Ireland and my thoughts on them. I hope they weren't too disappointed when I didn't comment on any of these things.

So what's the point of this post? Well, mr bitterman is trying like hell to get out and rant. I'm hoping that this will satisfy him. If not, be sure to dig around the dusty corners of the Internet. You may find him lurking somewhere. :)