So what kind of celebrity am I in real life? Not one, honestly. Or at least not one officially. I’ve been active and obvious in a lot of very large, very public local circles of people over the course of my life, and I currently live in the same house I grew up in. In high school, I was in the news so often for both athletics and academics that I was on a comfortable first name basis with all of the sports reporters in my not-at-all-small hometown and several from the larger metro area. Before media attention, people throughout the athletic community I was part of knew me in passing all over the midwest. After media attention, people I’d never met and who knew nothing about me recognized me on the street.

I went to college and deliberately fucking vanished, but then I moved back home and started working at a public library. I also started writing for the paper, so the strangers-recognizing me thing basically started back up without missing a beat; I remember being in the 24 hour grocery store at 1 in the morning and the sole other shopper in the place wound up in the checkout line behind me, and said, “hey aren’t you ...?” I was. Regulars at the library recognized me in public too, as did regulars at gyms I went to, and of course, there are always the 40 odd members of my extended family, all but a handful of whom live within 20 miles of me, most of whom are avid church-going socialites with huge circles of their own.

Once an old college boyfriend came to stay with me for a weekend, and we ran into somebody I knew literally everywhere we went. It was awkward as hell, obviously, because none of them had ever met him, but when we got back to my apartment, he was like, “wow, you . . .really do know everybody?”

Which wasn’t really true: other people know *me.*

There are a few other facets to this, but if I’m bored writing about them, I feel safe assuming everybody’s bored reading about them, so I’ll trust that I’ve made my point.

I’m never anonymous in public. Somebody always knows me. I’ve been halfway across the country on weekend get-aways before and ran into somebody I knew. Why is that important? Why can’t I just enjoy privacy on my own time, in my own space, and not worry about little things like running into judgemental relatives or vindictive former bosses while I’m buying beer on Friday night in a city where I don’t even live? I don’t know. Maybe if you’ve always been able to take anonymity for granted, or if you’re the kind of person who wants people to notice you, it’s hard to understand. I never get to just be some schmuck on the bus with everybody else. I always have to be a person that other people know. It’s exhausting.

When I get on tumblr, or some other blogging platform, I don’t have to be anybody in particular beyond the person I really am. I can think an actor is cute without having to defend my position (no, really) and if someone does demand that, I can block my knowledge of their entire existence with a single click. I can be out about religion and politics without worrying about which relative is going to stop talking to me, and how that decision is going to shake out across my interactions with several hundred people, all told, after they’ve all said their piece to all of their friends on facebook. I can be out about my sexuality without worrying that I’m going to be harassed for it at work or worse.

But basically, I can just be a mediocre dumbass without having to hear about how much potential I’m wasting or how I should have lived an entirely different life or how my atheism is making the baby jesus cry. I can share opinions and interests and fun with other people, and none of us ever have to know who’s really bad about checking their bank balance or who has chronic coffee breath or who just broke up with their 4th boyfriend in 3 months or who has debilitating insomnia and just got fired for missing work, unless one of us specifically chooses to reveal that information, because anonymity makes it safe to acknowledge that we’re normal fucking humans.