Thursday, January 25, 2007

Distorted Reflection of Me

Some common everyday words seem awfully distorted when you think about them. Really think about them. Sound them out, spell them out, roll them around your brain - left and right. Wierd is one of those awkward words. Quite awkward. But then so is quite. And awkward. Who the heck decided what awkward was to mean, how it was to be prounounced, and worse of all, how it was to be spelled? The more you think about it, the more distorted it gets. Such a wierd word. Awkward.

Looking into yourself can be a bit like that. On the surface, every day, life goes on and you are who you are. But if you stop and think about it. Really think about it. Turn yourself inside out - values, beliefs, actions, projections, thoughts - it can seem as if you are pretty distorted too.

So I just experienced a little bit of an unusual self-reflection exercise. To help my son figure out how to get Google adsense on his blog site, I added it to mine. I was just about to delete it when I realized that it some ways, the advertising on my site is a direct reflection of what I have written, which is a direct reflection of who I am, in part, sort of. So who am I, according to advertisers and Google spiders?

Over the last few weeks, I have had the following in my ad space: Photo lighting, Canon photography equipment, the Elkin Creek Guest Ranch, Singles Scuba Divers, Snowshoes, Mongolian yurts, Buddhist meditation, Eagle watching, Rafting trips, Jobs in Victoria, Sailing adventures, and Italian Singles.

I am married, so I'm not sure what the "Singles" is all about. But the rest sounds pretty good - adventure, relaxation, photography. And then there are the Italian studs... Quite wierd and distorted. Perhaps even, a bit awkward.

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