Your ways frighten and confuse me.

It always surprises me when someone is surprised to find out I write, or podcast, or any of the stuff I do while I’m making sure my area of responsibility doesn’t explode at the office.

“Oh, you wrote a book?” someone at work will ask, looking at me as if they were suddenly presented with a dog who could speak English, French, and German.

Maybe it’s because I’m a researcher type, but I generally Google the people I know sooner or later. When I met my good pal Christopher Gronlund, I think I’d known him all of 24 hours before I plugged his name into Google.

Recently, I’ve started to realize that maybe doing that is a bit weird. I’ve mentioned before that I live two lives: one in the real world, the other on the Internet. Neither life is necessarily too much different than the other — I’m the same person in both places. But I’m willing to wager I spend more time on the Internet than I do in the real world, thanks to my day job and my other day job. Googling is the most natural thing in the world to me, but people who live more of their lives out in the real world… probably not so much? I guess?

That’s a question for you, folks. How often do you find yourself Googling new acquaintances? (I include any Internet search in that, of course — it just sounds dirty to say you’re “Binging” someone.)