Seeking your self...

Do you ever Google yourself? 
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A friend suggested I try.  I discovered I come up a few ways - as Terry Nelson, everything to do with Abbey comes up, with my full name, some of my art work comes up.  That's interesting.  Did you know there is another Terry Nelson associated with the real Abbey Road in the UK?  [Did you know I immediately have a special fondness for anyone who shares my name or my birthday?] 
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Anyway, I came across a comment on some forum regarding me;  "Who is Terry Nelson anyway?"  Then I came across a very odd comment on a British blog - it must be the laguage barrier, but I honestly do not know what the fellow was getting at.  I know he doesn't believe my profile photo is a recent photo of me - and he is right of course - it isn't me at all, it is an actor.  (Couldn't that be a spring-board into some literary gem about how all of us are actors on the world's stage or something?  It's been done.)
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I didn't come up with much more stuff however.  Now days I rather like negative comments or the fact people discover what I am.  It shatters the false self I've presented to the world - and  to myself.  I frequently recall what I was like while living an immoral life, how I wanted to be accepted and tried to justify myself, all the while thinking I was so much more 'advanced' than 'normal people'.
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After repentance and beginning upon the way of conversion, my desire to be accepted didn't go away.  I recall religious people keeping me at arms length when it came to any involvement with church activities, suspecting my motives, my sincerity.  "I've changed," my inner voice would cry out, "I'm not like that anymore!" I would think to myself, 'I pray, I know the scriptures, I've studied, I read the Fathers, I was a monk!'  ...all the while thinking I was so much more 'advanced' than 'normal people'.
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It took many, many years to get over that stuff.  And no, I'm not really completely over it now either - although it seems to me, like any temptation, it is no longer the great stumbling block to authenticity it once was.  Yet that thought too is a temptation and a trap, isn't it.
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In all of this...
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I have come to realize of course that there is a special sensitivity one must maintain towards others on the Internet.  Not a few people have personality difficulties, mental illness, and any number of other issues we (and sometimes they) are not aware of.  Some folks are simply coarse and vindictive by nature.  Many times I think they are funny, sometimes I just don't get it, occasionally I get angry.
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Until I examine myself that is...
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"Remember especially that you cannot be the judge of anyone.  For there can be no judge of a criminal upon earth until the judge knows that he too is a criminal, exactly the same as the one who stands before him, and that he is perhaps most guilty of all for the crime of the one standing before him..." - The Brothers Karamazov
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Yes, I am the criminal.