Today is Data Privacy Day, which is a good occasion to think about why anyone shares personal information online.

Over Christmas holiday I had a couple of long conversations with my father-in-law, which I turned into a post. My in-laws really loved what they read, and were very thankful for it, but my father-in-law felt vaguely uncomfortable knowing that anyone who searched his name could read it and see a photo of his house. He couldn't say exactly why, it just didn't feel right. He is a very modest person who values his privacy and keeps his phone number unlisted. So I took the post down (update: a redacted version that addresses his concerns is back up).

It started to make me think more about generational differences in attitudes towards privacy. My father-in-law was born a bit before the baby boom generation, and still values his privacy strongly. Members of the net generation (roughly under 30) have never really known a time without the Internet, and are completely comfortable posting personal information online. This sometimes causes problems as Jon Favreau, the highly talented 27 year old speech writer for Obama's campaign, found out when he was tagged in this photo on Facebook. It was only up for two hours but the damage was done - it spread everywhere and can't be taken back, ever. Clinton graciously defused the incident by replying that she heard he was interested in a position at State.

Jon Favreau parties with Hilary.

But if posting too much can cause trouble, so can posting too little. A search on a former co-worker at Microsoft, Bob Visse, used to return a blog post titled “Bob Visse is a Big Fat Liar.” Bob is a professional marketer and has run PR teams, so he has pretty thick skin. But I think it bothered him to have this attack on his reputation be the first thing anyone would see if the searched on his name, especially as the post was inaccurate. Fortunately, Bob is a Microsoft executive and frequently quoted in press articles, and the inaccurate post no longer surfaces. This of course just highlights the importance of posting about yourself online: if you don’t do it, others will, and you might not like how they define you.

In addition to managing your reputation, there are other benefits to sharing information online. For example, my blog has helped me cope with serious family illness, remember details about great vacations, reflect on books read, hone my marketing skills, step back from the weariness of child rearing and appreciate what my children are teaching me, mourn the passing of a great teacher, and ponder the meaning of life, all while making me a better writer. None of this would have happened if I didn't have a blog open to the public. Just knowing someone might look at it (even if the data says no one really does) makes me put in a different kind of creative effort. In this way I guess blogging is sort of like painting. You can store the painting safely in a locked closet, but it only becomes real when others see it hung on a public wall.

• Distraction from cell phone use while driving (hand held or hands free) extends a driver's reaction as much as having a blood alcohol concentration at the legal limit of .08%. (University of Utah)
• The No.1 source of driver inattention is use of a wireless device. (Virginia Tech /NHTSA)
• Drivers that use cell phones are four times as likely to get into crashes serious enough to injure themselves. (NHTSA, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety)
• 10% of drivers aged 16 to 24 years old are on their phone at any one time.
• Driving while distracted is a factor in 25% of police reported crashes.
• Driving while using a cell phone reduces the amount of brain activity associated with driving by 37%. (Carnegie Mellon)

Inspired by NPR's Story Corps project, I recorded two long conversations with Don, my father-in-law, during Christmas vacation. We talked in his Springfield, Oregon home, which his wife Kate designed, and took in the view of the the McKenzie River. Drift boat fisherman use the house to mark one of their best holes for rainbow and cutthroat trout, calling it the "Pink Palace" due to its' southern French coloring and extensive gardens. Don, gentle and reserved, long ago accepted the sportsmen's jab at the feminine nature of his home, as he has a life defined by his strong willed wife and three daughters. In fact, rather than resist, he has embraced his fate, staking out a garden on the flood plain as the one area in his life where he has full control. His favorite plant is heirloom tomatoes, grown from 100 year old seeds. As with much in his life, it is a conservative choice that provides a high-quality result with low risk, and keeps the four female cooks in his family happy.

Don grew up in the '50s in Moline, Illinois, with Midwestern values. It was a conservative world of Belgian immigrants, drawn to the banks of the Mississippi River by the John Deere factory, and they believed in hard work, the family, the Catholic church, and the authority of government. His father was a diligent mechanic, his grandfather a happy drunk who shared their home, and his mother a saint who sheltered his older cousins Don and Walt from their angry father. When Don was 17, his father died from a heart attack brought on from digging the foundation of a new home. Suddenly he was the head of the family, and his mother turned to him to make the big decisions. Unsure and uncomfortable in this role, he looked to his older cousins for advice, and mostly repeated what they said.

To pay his way through the local Catholic college, Don worked at a factory that re-chromed gun barrels for air force planes. While co-workers snuck in bumpers and tailpipes for their cars to attract girls, Don brought in stove knobs and an oven handle. "I felt my mom, a widow, deserved a nicer kitchen," he says, though the guilt over illicit use of company supplies was still palpable decades later.

Despite a lack of chrome on his car, Don did manage to date, meeting Kate O'Toole through the drama club. During a dress rehearsal of a play, Kate helped Don with a quick costume change in the dark between scenes. He emerged with the clothes on backwards, panicking the director but cluing him in that he had a romantic opening. As was normal back then, they married while still in college.

Through biology class he found an internship in the pathology lab, which led to medical school and a career as an anesthesiologist. "It was fate," he remembers. He did not plan to be a doctor, or even to marry, he simply followed the path that opened in front of him. Loyola in Chicago was a well-known regional medical school, his mother liked that it was Catholic, and the head of the pathology lab was a major donor. He got in and went.

"It was the loneliest time of my life," he whispers. "The funnel kept narrowing, from high school to college to medical school, and I found myself competing with really good people." It didn't help that his roommate and best friend was the class valedictorian, a standard against which he would of course always fall short.

To pay for his last year of medical school, and to avoid being drafted into a combat role in the Vietnam war, Don joined the Navy. While many of his generation were turning against the war, he didn't really reflect on it. "Most of that stuff was happening on the coasts, and we were sheltered from it in medical school, in the Midwest, and eventually while in the military itself." It was a practical and dutiful approach to military service, one that did not really question authority.

The Watergate scandal eventually opened cracks in the values that had shaped his world since Moline. "I just couldn't believe that government at the highest levels could be so dishonest." Despite the cracks, the foundation remained in place, and while others were radicalized or forced into deeper introspection, Don's life mostly continued forward.

The Navy was a boon for his professional development. His low self-confidence as a student was pushed aside as he practiced at the forefront of the anesthesiology field, performing procedures at the naval hospitals in Portsmouth, Virginia and San Diego, California, where he was a clinical professor at UCSD. Despite not yet completing his board certification as an anesthesiologist, he was one of three doctors selected to train the senior medical officer who was going to be in charge of that very same certification board. "I sort of felt that made my odds of getting certified pretty good," he deadpans with both humility and humor.

With a growing family of three girls - Julia, Kerrie, and Vanessa - Don and Kate left the Navy and moved to Eugene, Oregon, attracted by the natural beauty surrounding the university town. They've lived there for over thirty years, occasionally attending ecumenical church with their daughters while Don worked at the local secular hospital, from which he retired four years ago. In a field where doctors occasionally develop overbearing and demanding personalities, Don was beloved for his competence, kindness, and ready supply of corny jokes.

Retirement rests awkwardly about him, and he admits that's he still not sure what's he supposed to be doing in this last phase of life. Fate has not laid out a clear path for him to follow, or the only one he sees ends simply in darkness. He enjoys his seven grandchildren during holidays, is working on his master gardener certification, and volunteers at Mount Pisgah Arboretum, where he teaches middle school students about local biology. But he's unsettled, as if he has too much time on his hands to reflect on his life and is finding that the old answers no longer seem helpful.

"You get to my age," he says softly, turning the words over slowly in his mouth before letting them out, "and you start to wonder what it's all about. I've seen some people donate money for a big building, feeling good that it will outlive them. But history teaches that all things end eventually. What's the point in trying to be remembered?"

It's a poignant question from a gentle man whose mark on his own life is impossibly light. His home is devoid of souvenirs, no medals lying in an old desk, no beat up leather chair, no collection of fast cars, no mounted trout fished from the river a mere hundred yards from his back door. Don is not found in any enduring physical thing. In fact, his presence can only truly be seen in the reflected love from his daughters and wife, a love which he makes manifest in his flood plain garden. By growing food to feed his family, and flowers to adorn the table, Don is doing his best to understand his fate: there is no garden without a gardener. But the point is to keep planting anyway.