Too....many....identities....

Paul wonders why anyone would want to use more than one screen-name, either on AOL or any other service that allows such features. I have two reasons for doing this:

1. One is professional. When I was trying to launch my freelance copywriting business (which never really got off the ground, alas -- but I can always try that again when I have better footing), I wanted to have an e-mail address dedicated to just that, and use my "Jaquandor" address for personal stuff as well as fiction-writing related e-mail. It just made things easier to maintain.

2. Both AOL and EarthLink, my main Internet portals, offer webspace to each active screenname or e-mail address in use. This is big. It allows me space to store my own images for use in this blog (as well as the background graphics for The Promised King), and since I can basically give myself a new 10MB of web space by just creating a new e-mail address or screen name (I haven't even used a third of the total aliases theoretically available to me), I shouldn't have to worry about running out of space here for a long, long time.

3. I also have a Hotmail account that I use exclusively for my eBay-related correspondence. It's just easier to have all of that e-mail going to one place.

4. My G-mail is just a backup, although I've started checking it more religiously after twice in one month discovering e-mails sent my way a week after the fact. This isn't really an alias or anything like that, but it sort of qualifies.

So, I don't really use multiple screen names or e-mail addresses in any attempt to obscure my identity from one set of online interactions to another; it's more a bit of mental book-keeping.

(I should also note that I used to be fairly militant about remaining strictly pseudonymous, but I eventually realized that this wasn't really important. It was about the same time that I realized that I have little to worry about from "identity theft", since anyone stealing my identity will find that it gets them about as far as the nearest NFTA bus stop.)