Searching for the Real Me

Photo from Depositphotos.com

This week’s topic was one I proposed: If someone were to look at your internet search history, what conclusions might that person draw about you?

I viewed my browsing history recently, and it looks like most of my online time falls into one of these categories: 

Answers to Jeopardy questions that I didn’t hear because someone was making noise. As I mentioned last week, this is one of the few television shows I watch on a regular basis, and hubby knows I get irritated when he sneezes, grunts, or otherwise distracts me, but he just can’t seem to help it. So I often have to look up the answers that I missed.

News stories that I want more detail about. Again, this is often because someone was making noise or needing help when an interesting news story was on, or because the person controlling the remote decides he’d rather watch another episode of Cannonball  (his current favorite). Although sometimes I’ll see a headline in my news feeds that makes me want to learn more, OR I’ll see a news headline that sounds fishy and I want to fact-check it. 

Questions about stuff in my manuscript. Since my stories are mostly historical, I often look for resources to determine what could or could not have happened in my plot.  Examples from my current WIP would be how much certain items cost in 1865, what people ate, and whether or not certain phrases were in use. I also look for names that were popular during that time and location, details about events that took place during that time, and maps to find out how far certain cities are from each other, to determine how long it might take a character to travel from one place to another. And since my story revolves around two people who’ve taken a train to get where they are, I had to research railroad lines that existed then.

Pictures for promo. We have to be careful to use images that are available for public use, or those that we’ve paid for. I have accounts at two different stock photo companies that I use to create memes and other promotional tools in addition to this blog. But it often takes a long time to find just the right photo. Recently, I tried to find a picture of ice cubes in a ziplock bag, because that’s part of the book snippet I wanted to illustrate. Unfortunately, after searching through hundreds of pictures of ice in various forms (icebergs, ice cream, ice skating, etc) on both sites, I gave up on that idea and settled for a photo of a pile of melting ice cubes.

Synonyms. When I’m writing, I often know what I want to say, but I can’t quite come up with a good word to express it. Fortunately, it’s easy to find an online thesaurus to help me. 

Random stuff that nobody else cares about. I’ve always been curious, and as I’ve mentioned here, my interests are wide, and my attention span is short. Every now and then a question will pop into my head out of nowhere and I can’t do anything else until I find the answer to my question.

Conclusion: I guess if someone (who’s not an author) were to look at all the sites I’ve visited lately, that person might deduce that I’m an uninformed, sheltered person with no focus who never goes anywhere and doesn’t know how to express herself.