So, I had to change my email address recently. It is, of course, weirdly complicated. Much of our digital identity at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st was driven off of the email address as personal identification.
It's kind of hard to remember that.
It's also a challenge to remember how flimsy a web-based email seemed. So, a gmail account or a yahoo account just seemed unsteady... untrustworthy. Therefore I stuck with my account with an isp for years. Years. I've had the same email account since the mid 90s.
The world has changed, though. Now, isps are declining in number and diversity. The digital economy works off the notion that you have cable internet or the equivalent in your house and access to free wifi out and about. It's just a different world. And the isps of the 90s are now little more than theatrical props. They are that 2-D Western storefront held up by 2X4s. As long as you are filming from the front they look fine... but if you open the door... pure fiction.
Anyway, tomorrow my old digital ID disappears. It's an odd feeling. I'm sure I've forgotten a dozen places that know me through that address. Here's hoping that I lose nothing really important.
This particular rhapsody is brought to you by the guy I just saw at Starbucks. Curly gray mullet, sharp creases in his ironed white jeans with the very clear Skoal outline in the front left pocket.
Change is hard. But Skoal is bad for you.
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