Paranoia

I woke up at 4am this morning, breathing hard, as the traces of a nightmare slipped away into wakefulness. The nightmare: a public shaming. In my dream, several colleagues from work called me out on my mistakes, stripped me of my duties, mocked me publicly, and put me on probation. I woke up feeling tight and tense and paranoid. I immediately got up, logged into my computer, and blocked all public access to my public blogs.

I calmed down a bit by about 4:30 am, and unblocked all public access. But did delete a post for good measure. Not that the post was at all related to my dream, but still.... Sometimes I think it's better not to let the masses know you are human, because they can use that against you.

This evening my computer is running slowly. I was at a conference all week, staying at a resort hotel in the off-season, using unsecured wireless internet to manage email and accounts and editing. Could tonight's slowness be related to the unsecured network?

I changed all my passwords upon my return. Which is annoying. Now I have to remember them all again.... Three of them are completely new.

And so, starting the evening in a bit of computer paranoia, I responded to a friend request by an old friend new to Facebook, and scanned my list of friend suggestions.

Four suggestions this evening. Suggestion number three: Facebook suggests that I become friends with the contractor who I fired nearly a year ago. Yup. That guy who walked off of our project leaving us without plumbing or electricity.

Which means Facebook has been crawling through my email.

Or his.

Is it time to remove my Facebook account? Strip public access to my blogs?

I begin to wonder....