Thursday

9 February 2012

From my inbox:
"I’ve started and then stopped about 20 different blogs, mostly because I got worried about who might read what I was writing. I don’t want my family to find it but I’m afraid they will even if I don’t tell them about it. Do you censor yourself? Or do you just write and worry about it later? I have a lot to say and I really want to blog, but how?"

Do I censor what I say here? Hell yes. If I blogged about all the things spinning through my head while they were spinning the fastest, I would alienate 80% of the people who read my blog, and the other 20% would probably only hang around to see me crash and burn (I have haters! Who’da thunk it!) I try to not blog the things that I shouldn’t—if it’s going to embarrass or humiliate someone close to me, I just don’t put it out there—and I try (stress try) to be fair in the things I do throw out into the Internets.

I know there are a lot of bloggers out there who lay it all out, good and bad, for the world to read and then pick apart, but I’m not one of them. Consequently, I’m far less interesting, but things that are not mine to tell, I avoid telling.

[Part of that is knowing that I’m socially brain dead; I don’t tell…but I also don’t ask. I’ve spent so many years being friends with the World’s Most Paranoid Person, knowing there are questions I just don’t ask because no answers will be forthcoming that not asking is the norm for me (he knows I blame him. I blame him for a lot; he’s easy to blame and he doesn’t mind taking the blame. He knows he’s incredibly hard to be friends with…which is good because he’s ruined my ability to navigate simple social situations.)

Ha, so there. Not censoring that.

Still…if you know me in person and wonder why the hell I don’t ask the questions most people ask, why I’m as quiet as I am, it’s the fault of the World’s Most Paranoid Person. I used to be a chatterbox; now I wait until answers are offered without the questions being asked.]

If I were going to start blogging all over again (which seems like a lot of work after nearly 10 years) and I wanted to talk about things I didn’t want people connecting to me… I’d probably blog anonymously, using pseudonyms other than “the Spouse Thingy” and “the Boy” for people in my life. I would imagine that would get awfully confusing after a while, but it would be a way around the little identifying details.

I don’t know any other way around it; if you want to blog without worrying about what family thinks, make up names and places. But I’m putting it out here in case someone else has a better idea, because my friends are pretty smart, even the most paranoid one.

2 comments:

Angel, Kirby and Max said...

If I was sharing personal family things I would definitely censor. If I want tie family to know my thoughts ans feelings, I will tell them face to face. I would not want them to read it some where. Using pseudonyms would get confusing for me to keep up with and be too much work so I just don't. My daughter in law used alternate names for her boys and I had to make a list to know who was who!

Sleepypete said...

Even though it probably looks as if I put Everything into my blog, I'm still censoring a lot of stuff.

I'll use codenames (where the inspiration has come to let me think them up) to anonymise who I'm talking about but I'll also drop the codenames when I'm really worried about a friend. (Partly cos I know people who see right through the codenames!)

I have the awkwardness about talking to people too, although with me I think it's more situational. It's tough to have a deep & meaningful conversation at work when other people can listen in and I rarely see people outside the work situation.

PS My mum & dad don't know about my blog, my sister has seen the occasional post but never twigged that it was me writing it :-)