Anonymity

Someone has expressed at least a little surprise about the fact that I'm not using my real name, here. The truth is that pretty much everyone who is reading it already knows who I am. (My mother reads it regularly, and at least one of my on-line friends has read it some. I don't know who else has read it. No one has left a comment, and I haven't yet figured out how to set up a site meter.) So why bother?

Well, I guess I do have a vision that this blog will some day grow beyond my family and immediate circle of friends. You could certainly find it by a general Google search, or by following some of the various ways that Blogger lets you look for something. I hope that I'll be able to find a voice that means something, and that is interesting to read.

And I want to keep the freedom that comes with not having my name hanging on it. At least one blogger that I read regularly, Dr. Crazy, has had some difficulty with this issue. She writes regularly about the academic life, including some frank discussions of her students, and she's not sure that she wants it to be easy for her students to read it and connect it to themselves. I'm not sure that I'll be doing that, but I still want to have at least some wall of privacy between "USJogger" and the real me.

Of course, it's a flimsy wall. I've revealed enough about myself that you could find me. And, of course, if you know me, my picture is all over the thing. That's the running gag in this blog. But for now, I'll continure to be USJogger, and I'll talk about Mrs. Jogger and the little Joggers, and if you know who I am, you'll know who I'm talking about. And if you don't know who I am, believe me, it doesn't matter.