We’re all guilty of the crime of self-Googling. You’ve done it. I’ve done it. We’ve all done it. Maybe we flat-out Google ourselves manually (which sounds dirty but usually isn’t), or we get all advanced about it and set up Google alerts with our names in it, or we just troll around friends’ blogs looking for shout-outs. Don’t even try to deny it.

So I was self-Googling the other day and, for lack of something better to do, I clicked on the 7th link on the first page of results.

It was my Wikipedia entry.

My heart nearly broke.

Before I tell you why I was saddened, I need to be honest about my Wikipedia entry: I wrote it. Yes, it’s true. I broke the 1st law of Wikidom, and wrote most of that entry about myself. I did it back in 2005 while anticipating the release of Pocket Guide to the Bible. Surely having written four books and contributing to a few national magazines makes a person notable, right? And shouldn’t notable people be in Wikipedia? Then why wasn’t I in Wikipedia?

Then a better question occurred: If Wikipedia was user-driven, then why shouldn’t I, as a user, just, you know, kind of introduce myself? So I wrote this quick, simple entry and listed my books. It was humble, subtle, straight-forward. I hardly thought about it. It was over and done with in, like, three minutes. Yes, it was a sin. But it was a minor sin, like coveting your neighbor’s iPhone.

Other than some coding and categorization, my entry stayed mostly the same in the years since.

Until recently. Apparently it’s been too long since the page has been updated, or since I’ve released a book, or since I’ve been interviewed in any legitimate publications. Because when I clicked over to it the other day, I discovered the page had been tagged with this notice:

————
This article may not meet the general notability guideline or one of the following specific guidelines for inclusion on Wikipedia: Biographies, Books, Companies, Fiction, Music, Neologisms, Numbers, Web content, or several proposals for new guidelines. If you are familiar with the subject matter, please expand or rewrite the article to establish its notability. The best way to address this concern is to reference published, third-party sources about the subject. If notability cannot be established, the article is more likely to be considered for redirection, merge or ultimately deletion, per Wikipedia:Guide to deletion.
————

My very existence is “likely to be considered for…deletion”?

That’s never fun to hear.

I was about to start off this post by saying, “Not to toot my own horn, but…” and then I stopped. Because I realized I was, in fact, about to toot my own horn. Because any time someone starts a sentence like this…

I don’t mean to brag, but…

or

I don’t want to sound disrespectful, but…

…then they are lying. What they’re doing is trying to soften the fact that, yes, they really do intend to brag and they really are about to say something disrespectful. It’s just that they realized it before the words came out and are trying to soften it a little. But they don’t fool me.

And anyway, isn’t the act of blogging pretty much a way of tooting one’s own horn anyhow? One of my tags on this blog is “shameless self-promotion” and it’s one I use for almost every post. This blog? More self-absorbed than a reality-show contestant in a hall of mirrors.

(I have no idea what that means.)

Anyway…I competed in and finished my first triathlon this weekend and I feel the need to tell you about it. It was a sprint triathlon (350-yard swim, 12.7-mile bike, 5K run). It was hard, and I hadn’t trained sufficiently for it, but it was fun and I finished. And now I can walk around feeling healthier and more accomplished than anyone else. I want to have conversations like this:

Me: “Hey, man. What did you do this weekend?”

Friend: “Oh, nothing. Slept late. Watched the British Open. Drank some beer.”

Me: “Cool. I ran a triathlon.” (Zing!)

…but I don’t. That would probably be going too far in the name of horn-tooting. And I’ve gone far enough already.

Action shot:

If you’re so inclined, you can read more about it at Prayers for Blowouts or my family blog.