Easy peasy. I’m retired, so there is no work life. There’s only home life.
For me, a more realistic question is how do I balance my online life (i.e., blogging on WordPress) and my offline life (i.e., real life).
I’m still trying to figure that out.
What is your middle name? Does it carry any special meaning/significance?
I blog anonymously. I don’t reveal my real world first name, nor my last name. I do have a real world middle name, but since I blog anonymously, I’m not going to reveal my middle name either.
My blogging nom de plume, pen name, pseudonym, the name under which I blog, is Fandango. Fandango has a last name, according to WordPress. It’s Fivedotoh. So for blogging purposes, my full name is Fandango Fivedotoh.
Fandango Fivedotoh has no middle name, so if I am to write a post about my middle name, it would have to be “NMN.” And that makes me Fandango NMN Fivedotoh
NMN means “No Middle Name.” It has no significance other than as a placeholder for where a middle name would be if Fandango had one, which he doesn’t.
As to the meaning or significance of my real world middle name, which I’m not going to reveal, I have no idea. I’d have to ask my parents why they chose that particular name for my middle name. But I can’t. They’re dead. So if there was any special meaning or significance to my real world middle name, my parents took it with them to the grave.
Oh well.
Melanie is back again with another one of her Share Your World series of questions. So let’s get to them.
Can we really know everything?
Know everything? These days I feel like I don’t know anything anymore.
Where were people before they were born?
They didn’t exist. The were the same place they are after they die: nowhere.
Does the Law of Attraction exist? (Law of Attraction, as I understand it, is a school of thought where positive thinking brings about good changes. Some say it’s made them wealthy. Others say it improves their health or their outlook on life)
Birds of a feather flock together, right? So it stands to reason that positive people attract positive people and negative people attract negative people. Or not. As I said, I don’t know anything anymore.
Do we love ourselves more in the virtual world and less in the real world? If so, why? If nay, why?
I have no idea how to answer this question, as I’m the same person in the real world as I am in the virtually world.
GRATITUDE SECTION
Are you happy?
I am content.
Welcome once again to Fandango’s Provocative Question. Each week I will pose what I think is a provocative question for your consideration.
By provocative, I don’t mean a question that will cause annoyance or anger. Nor do I mean a question intended to arouse sexual desire or interest.
What I do mean is a question that is likely to get you to think, to be creative, and to provoke a response. Hopefully a positive response.
I blog anonymously, and so do a significant number of other bloggers. I’m not on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media sites, but I understand that a lot of people on those sites are posting anonymously, using pseudonyms or aliases.
In my case, I use a pseudonym on WordPress to protect my personal privacy and because I’ve had my identity stolen for fraudulent purposes twice already. But I don’t use my anonymity for malicious purposes or to be offensive.
So, along those lines, my provocative question this week is…
If you choose to participate, write a post with your response to the question. Once you are done, tag your post with #FPQ and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments. But remember to check to confirm that your pingback or your link shows up in the comments.
Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.
How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Friday Flashback post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.
If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 25th) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.
This was originally posted on February 25, 2018.
To a post that I wrote for the WordPress one-word prompt yesterday, a short, somewhat tongue-in-cheek piece of flash fiction, I received a comment from one of my regular readers (and favorite bloggers), Marilyn Armstrong at Serendipity, who wrote:
“This is one of those times in which I wish there was more of you in this and less verbal play. It’s cute, but where are YOU?”
Marilyn’s comment got me thinking. Marilyn is very open in her excellent blog about who she is in “the real world.” She posts about herself, her husband, her family, her home, her dogs, her work, her play, and the trials, tribulations, and joys of her life. Her blog is very personal and she’s quite forthcoming. And that’s why she has more than 10,000 followers.
My blog’s About page notes upfront that “My real world identity will remain a mystery.” I once had my identity stolen and it took many painful months to get that all straightened out. Consequently, I am perhaps overly guarded about revealing too much about myself, my personal life, and my family, which is why I blog anonymously.
Also on my About page, I reveal that I’m a retired, liberal, practical, and pragmatic septuagenarian. I also admit that I can be a bit cantankerous, as well as somewhat pedantic (i.e., fussy) when it comes to grammar, spelling, and usage.
Now if I wanted to be glib about answering Marilyn’s question about where I am, I could respond by saying that I live in San Francisco with my wife, our dog, and our cat.
But in reality, I’m a boring man, a senior citizen who lives a rather routine, nondescript life. I’m neither particularly inspiring nor especially interesting. Which is why many of my posts on this blog recently are flash fiction pieces in response to various prompts. What goes on inside my imagination is much more fascinating and colorful than what goes on in my real world.
So to answer Marilyn’s question, I’m right here. A piece of me is in every post I write, whether I’m expressing my opinions, sharing my observations, offering my perspectives, or flexing my imagination. This post and my words that you are reading is where I am.
I’m right here…hiding in plain sight.
This, That, and the Other 