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Does the effort of a man equal his greatness? Does the communique left out in the open make him vulnerable? Does a stalker know a man better than the man knows himself? Is there any way for a man to leave behind his past, with a great paper trail behind him?

These thoughts came to the front this morning, as I drank water in agitation. How could I be comfortable with myself, when there were different versions of me scattered in my friends' inboxes, posted online to websites, and left behind as evidence of a temporary inspiration, an idea never brought to fruition but still sitting there, ripe for revisiting? I know how long I have carried this great weight of leadership. I've wanted to be a companion to the weird, and a friend of crazies and creative people for so long, that every effort to bust out of my shell has been adding up, to this great bin of evidence that I'm the crazy one.

In one way, it's not so bad. I have a lot of this trail logged in just one email account. And then, since I've permanently deleted one Facebook, and switched to this one specific social media plan, I can at least be aware of all this evidence. I can read up on it and learn just exactly where I'm influencing the world.

I can revisit it slowly, and own up to all my own problems and half-planned escapes. And I can learn how to live a more private life from them. After all, a man with a paper trail should be easy to find. But what if the trail stops?

If I'm hiding, at least I'm not hiding from myself.