On Blogging and Journals

As some of you may or may not know, I have a splotchy history with journaling and blogging. It all goes back to "ALL THE EVIL" nearly 20 years ago. One of the pieces of evil was having someone read my private journal and hold me accountable for what I had written in it. Well. And tell other people what was in it. But generally speaking, that was long ago and I'm largely over that piece of the evil.

However, a piece remains and that is my fear that what I write will be taken seriously or held against me or get morphed into something I can't control. I've written for myself and shredded the evidence. I've also written very public and raw journals. My ultimate solution to the problem of private journaling was to just throw it all out there. It worked well since I have a nasty habit of blurting random things out all the time anyway. Sooner or later someone was going to learn random things about me.

Lately I've decided to start really writing again and now I'm thinking about the very public self that has formed. And herein lies the problem.

If you know me well, you know that the public side is actually a pretty honest view of who I am. I am the type of person who wears a toga for no reason. I paint my door purple, want another jeep, drink bloody marys, sail, watch Star Wars, and read disconnected and geeky blogs and newspapers.

If you don't know me well, you're likely to independently enhance certain aspects on your own. Or worse, come to expect that I am ALWAYS the toga girl or the flippant creature of the insomnia hours. I don't want to have to censor my writing because I'm worried that someone will catch a piece of information and turn it into some partial or incorrect vision of who I am.

So. I don't really need all 500 people on my friends list to get updated with my latest blog post. What I would ask is that if you are reading, that you follow the blog, so I know whether or not to apologize to you at a PTA meeting for some entry in which I complain about cars or something.