Back in college, my mom called me and asked if I could check on my sister. My mom lived 10,000 miles away and hadn’t heard from my sister in a while and just wanted to know if she was ok. These were the days of paper letters and long distance phone call charges. I made a lot of long distance phone calls (expensive for me in those days but cheaper for me within the US than for my mom overseas) and tracked my sister down to Denton, TX where she’d taken a summer job. The letter must have gotten lost in the mail.
This morning someone asked about a former colleague who they haven’t been able to reach. Intrigued I checked his blog. No update since February. Same with Twitter. No updates since February. Same with LinkedIn. Now the question is, is he ok? Or did he choose to go off the grid? I found some Github activity in May, so probably he went quiet on purpose. Then I checked his Strava profile. He ran 48.9 miles in June so I think he’s ok.
And now I feel creepy for stalking him!
Could you go offline? Really offline? Or stay online and hide your tracks?