So one day you start up a blog. A lovely way to express your thoughts, keep family and friends up to date with your life, explore your convictions. It's brilliant; an interactive scrapbook/journal/soap box. You fall madly in love with it. Shamelessly sending out mass emails, begging ALL your friends, family, random acquaintances to "check out my blog." Repeatedly.
You install a tracker or two; you need to know who and where and when. You slobber over how many people all over the country, the world, somehow find your little corner of the blogiverse. DOZENS! You faithfully monitor how many and which pages they viewed, obsessing over the details - constantly wondering what they really think.
The hours you spend reading other blogs. You discover some "popular" blogs and try to figure out what makes them so special. You leave comments everywhere, maybe even including a tacky, self-promoting link, hoping for more traffic, more followers and fans.
Ah, reading the comments; first in the inbox, then again, in context with your post. The amazing, wonderful, precious comments. Reaffirming your stance, challenging it, making you clarify, reevaluate, reinforce. Sweet, sweet comments ... these people, these strangers, these dear friends.
You start to feel a little brazen, a little needy, a little obligated.
Then you go too far, reveal a secret that wasn't yours, insult or offend a loved one, embarrass your spouse one too many times and you realize freedom has a price.
You draw inward. Wondering what you value more: the outlet or peace. It's all changes. You wish for anonymity again. You want to be read, praised, but you've painted your blog into a corner. What would happen if you blogged smack about someone and they read it?
It's weird: people love to read about hyper-personal issues, until they are the issue. No one wants to know what you really think (unless you always adore them).
Several times I've crossed the line and I have to assume that either people don't talk to me because they know everything via my blog or they fear the conversation will become blog fodder. That's fair. Heartbreaking, but fair.
And then ... the stuff you're dying to blog about and absolutely can't mention. The stuff that rips your heart out, strips you of that glorious sense of security, calls into question the things you cherish and value most. Your greatest fears, desperately close to realization. Personal Hell. Blogger Gold. And not a word can be uttered.
You think you know me, that my blog is me sharing myself with you. But there are lonely corners of my life that can not be illuminated.
Not here.
Not now.
13 Brilliant Bits of Inspiration:
I struggle with this same topic occasionally. "Should I write about this?" Or, "Perhaps that last entry wasn't such a hot idea..."
Boundaries are an ongoing learning process for me, including boundaries of blog propriety. Occasionally feels like an undiscovered country...
*Hugs*
Hope everything's okay.
This is why most of my friends and family have no idea I have a blog. Janet got me started so she knows (of course), however her and I are very open and hard to offend.
I struggle with the same thing. I've considered starting a blog that really is just my own journal allowing access to only me or just a few of my closest friends because some things are way too touchy, but I feel the need to write about them for some reason. I really worry about hurting people's feelings and the people's feelings I'm most likely to hurt are those closest to me - husband, father, sometimes friends and other family. I don't know what you're feeling or wishing you could share, but I totally get it. Two years ago I went through some really difficult things, but there was no way I could talk about it. Luckily I had a couple friends and family members I eventually confided in, but it is a really lonely place to be. If you need to talk, I'm a phone call away :)
thanks all - love blogging - but it has limitations. there is no such thing a freedom of speech. everything we say has a price: say nice things, the cost could be honesty, but say true things (at least from your point of view) and the price can be much too high.
Perhaps that is why they say "silence is golden."
You know what? Screw 'em - er, sort of. Yeah! screw 'em sort of!! I may be in the minority (although somehow I doubt it) but I don't come to your blog to read things and nod my head. I come because I enjoy your writing style, am truly entertained, and don’t mind it one bit if I have to do some soul searching or head shaking in the process.
As for revealing some secret about someone you really care about, people have been doing that for years without the help of blogs - somehow they forgive each other, right?
What a crazy medium. If you write a book, much easier to ignore (or defer) the mob.
Hope you are ok =)
Blogging is a really good way to find your voice, writing wise, but there are some things ... maybe later.
You mean you can see when I've gone on but NOT left a comment....ooh that's kinda sneaky....sneaky in a cool, James Bond-esque way....
Well, here I am leaving a comment. Is someone pregnant? Is it you and it's too early to share the news? I just am going with a hunch here, a pretty wild one, but a hunch nonetheless.
Hoping it's good news (not bad)
Catherine
PS--my other guess is that it has to do with your meme post.
Hey, I almost forgot....if it cheers you up any, I came across another word for 'vagina,' seeing as how we're discussing unspeakable things and this makes me remember the minor controversy about that word a little while ago....it's.....vagineer (like engineer, but down there)! It comes from my sister Rebecca, but I have no idea where she got it from.
Thought I would share it, since it seems like a good time to do so.
Catherine
I've thought about your post a lot today and not just out of curiosity but out of empathy -- although, writing you can't write something is the surest way to make all eyes more attentive.
I think most people really do sympathize with this truth: "But there are lonely corners of my life that can not be illuminated."
Perhaps sometimes the best we can do is to just know that while we may dwell alone in that solitary space, everyone has a corner of his or her own.
Frost's "Desert Places":
"And lonely as it is that loneliness /
Will be more lonely ere it will be less-- / A blanker whiteness of benighted snow / With no expression, nothing to express. / They cannot scare me with their empty spaces / Between stars--on stars where no / human race is. / I have it in me so much nearer home / To scare myself with my own desert places."
vesperstar - so true, "I have a secret, but I can't tell anyone" is a bit of a ploy, but it is true, that because I've told everyone I've ever met to check out my blog, because I have trackers and I know who's here everyday and who only stops by for special occasions, because I want to keep certain relationships intact an as unabused as possible, I will just carry somethings, let them be unblogged ... though I'd love to hear what you all have to say ... sometimes (as I am still learning) it's just gossip pretending to be blog. We shall see..
Well, great, my curiosity is stoked. I hope this isn't horrible, awful news.
Sorry folks, I'll leave you in the lurch - I'm not pregnant, no one is dying (or rather we all are), and, stupid STUPID me, without any of the fun of a spill all series, I still have to apologize, eat crow, with a side of humble pie as my just desserts.
Of course, if I just threw EVERYTHING out, I wouldn't be the Mysterious Mrs. B. Roth, I'd just be mrs. b ... and probably that would be just ms. b.
Post a Comment