Introductions and Omphaloskepsis

"Hello Blog world" I say awkwardly. It doesn't say anything back. Yet at least. I imagine the behemoth of a great collective continuing to whir and grind, hardly aware that it has acquired a new cell (minion?)... But in time, how will the beast respond? Will it just be the cells who I already know who interact with my page-- making it an extra doohickey for the use of an existing social circle? Or will relatively alien individuals descend out of cyberspace to take notice? If so, what sort of people will they be?

Maybe the beast will relegate me to its appendix or some other obscure compartment or tissue for being part of the "late majority" section of the bell curve on technology matters.

So I struggle with how to present myself and my new creation. Self-presentation can be an interesting game. It involves not only honesty and dishonesty, but also art and skills of perception. It involves understanding one's self, understanding others with their ways of noticing and processing and appraising, understanding cultural and sub-cultural sensibilities, and understanding the way it all fits together. And playing both sides, you find you may learn things about people that they don't seem to notice about themselves by how they play the game, and perhaps wonder in what ways others do the same with you. Then again, it's generally a good bet that an individual will have out-over-thinked you concerning themselves. Maybe they did notice what you noticed, and either intentionally made it appear as if they didn't, or couldn't find a good way around appearing a certain way, or understand it differently, or just don't care enough.

Perhaps some of you can tell that I've been experimenting with online dating sites recently.

Let me indulge in over-thinking a little further. Just now, I dropped a hint to the initiated using the psychology term "self-presentation",  that I might bask in the glow of sophistication. But I fear that people who really know their stuff (unlike me) will see pretentious naivety- and maybe the people who don't know their psychobabble  will just see pretentiousness. So I'm bringing it into the open and being self-deprecatory to steal everybody's thunder. It's a tactic. Next, I start worrying about all the people who may object to all this very unpragmatic over-thinking. Was the humor enough to placate their judgments? Really, most of you reading this are probably more friendly to me than would warrant such concern. The judgmental pragmatists probably wouldn't have gotten this far anyway. But surely you can resonate that during introductions, and all sorts of social interactions besides, we worry about these sorts of things? I'm not sure whether to feel sinful or simply to warmly smile at my self-absorption. I like the second choice. What do you think?

Moving on, perhaps I should offer some explanation of the title. I came up with it as a title for some spiritual-philosophical-psychological (-navel gazing) reflections I've been writing, and figured it wouldn't be a bad name for a blog either. Plus, nothing else that's good came to mind.  Typical of myself as it would be, it might be a mistake to analyze too deeply for you the notions behind the title. But I will say that it means at least a couple different things. Humor me and look up what a gadfly is if you don't already know.