by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I left South Korea a long, long time ago. There are young children nearly about to drive who were born around the time I left Seoul the last time. And, yet, South Korea can be something of a blackhole in the sense that once you pass its Event Horizon, you never really can ever leave.
Now, let me be clear — I have a hyperactive imagination and I often spin some pretty wild tales from very, very little information. So, when I saw that I appeared in three searches on LinkedIn and one of them was from someone with the Korea Joongang Daily, I immediately thought the absolute worst. And by absolute worst, I mean maybe some sort of expose on me being a crazed drunk asshole when I was still in Seoul. Or something equally ominous.
I was kind of a huge drunk asshole for much of my time in South Korea and while I didn’t do anything that bad, I definitely did a few things that probably would get me “canceled” if, for some reason, I became a public figure.
I’m a very different person than I was when I was in South Korea. I have a lot more humility and, in some respects, it’s like I have had a brain transplant. But in this hypersensitive world, where apparently everything you’ve done in your entire life can be held against you until you die…well, you know. I can be a severely flawed person and times and being “pickled” in South Korea only aggravated that particular situation.
But I have a lot of wisdom now. There’s not much I can do about who I was nearly 20 years ago. You just try to be the best person you can be now.
Some other interesting things — another person to search for my name in the last week was an “author.” It makes me wonder if maybe my qusi-defense of J.K. Rowling maybe caught the attention of her — or someone like her. And, lastly, one of the pictures Google references in its Image Search for me is DEFINITELY NOT ME. I have retweeted too many of the guys sexxy pictures on Twitter, and the algorithm decided that the two of us looked enough alike to use his picture with my name. Ugh.
Everything is horrible.
