Today's song is Diary, by Bread, released in 1971.

I do a lot of reading and surfing across the Internet almost every day. I often provide links to articles I find here to spark your curiosity. I then leave it up to readers to decide to click the link or not.

Lately, I've been reading stories online. Some of the sites I visit offer real-life stories. Sometimes the stories are submitted anonymously. People want to submit anonymous stories because they value their privacy. They are also exercising Freedom of Speech if they are submitting a story as an American citizen.

I have found some stories that in some ways reflect periods of my own life. It reinforces what I often say here, that many real-life stories occur in large frequency to people in every generation. Things I write about are not that unique to me, they have generally happened countless times in history. For instance some people in my life not only had particular interactions with me, they had similar interactions with many people.

Some of the best anonymous stories are written without character names. The character doesn't need a name. The reader doesn't have a clue who the character is, or even if that character ever really existed at all. While another person reading that same story, might be able to relate the character to another real person.

That's the beauty of stories. That's why some of the best stories are written anonymously and without referencing character names. It allows the reader to focus on the story itself and imagine the characters in their own frame of reference. Stories let us escape for our own reality or understand that reality better. I may republish some of the anonymous stories on this site in the near future as I find them interesting to me.

I want to say that as an extension of people's desire to escape reality, they participate in Second Life (example scene shown below). Now there's a place filled with a mixture of anonymous characters occasionally incorporating transactions that have some basis in the real world around us.

I myself have an existence in Second Life. I won't identify my character's name there because I want it to remain a secret. Maybe I'll have a opportunity to be a Storyteller there? Maybe I will sell my book there [link since deleted]? Maybe Time Out Of Mind will be transported there and cease to exist in this form and name here? I have many choices in Second Life and being an anonymous person there has real advantages.

Speaking of alternate reality's here's a cool link allowing you to put a picture of your own choice into a different background.

I close today's message with the following Digital Insight.

Natural Influences (Created in May 2000)

The practical implications of psychology are a favorite study of mine. Some people are very easy to predict how they will respond. Some people are often cloaked in mystery and respond in unpredictable ways.

One of the ways to potentially affect outcomes for another's course of actions is to understand a person's 'natural influences', that is, how they perceive the world about them and navigate accordingly.

Ask someone about their ideas. Listen to them closely and you may learn a great deal about them and what motivates them to pursue one idea over another.

We are all effected by a natural rhythm of life that is unique to each of us. If you can tap into a person's natural ways, you can understand them to a much higher degree. Using my own words, I quote a portion from that page's narration:

"How do ideas originate?"

Don