The Sarcastic Journalist wrote about being “out there” and asked her readers how much they share about themselves. She wondered how they determine what to talk about and how much to talk about it. Like herself and some of her commenters, I don’t have a lot of hard and fast rules about what I do and don’t say here. I generally decide as I’m writing and editing. Over time, I’ve found I’m comfortable following some basic guidelines regarding our identity, my husband and children, and my job.
When I started cool beans, my husband and I talked about how much we were comfortable sharing with the World Wide Web. My main question to him was, “Should we use names or pictures?” I wanted to use one or the other because I thought it would make readers more comfortable, more at home. It would allow you to put a name or a face with the people I’m talking about. We decided pictures would be okay but names were something we weren’t comfortable sharing. Mostly, we thought names would make us searchable and therefore findable. Pictures are a bit harder to Google.
So for a while, I had three tiny pictures of my kids’ faces on this page. At first, you had to scroll nearly to the bottom. For a short time after that, they were the header in my layout. Then, something creepy happened and I removed the pictures and renamed several images in my Photobucket accounts. I don’t know that anyone lifted the few tiny pictures I had on this site, but I didn’t want to wonder. I didn’t want that “What if?” knocking around inside my skull.
I’ve written about a fight with my husband and it’s still there in my archives somewhere. When I sift through the things I’ve written and I happen upon that piece, I don’t like how I sound. I don’t like the mental image of myself that gets painted in my head. That feeling stops me from writing about every little thing he does that drives me crazy. Also, he reads this website at my insistence. So I should probably be nice to him, huh? It is also better for my marriage if I learn to work these things out with him rather than running my fool mouth off at everybody else. Because what are you going to do about it? And I certainly don’t want to open him up to abusive trolls. He can get his own blog if he wants that.
Recently, I read a Leah Peah interview where Alice discussed writing about her child. I can’t say it better than she did, so I’ll quote her…
I try not to make the blog about Henry as much as it is about my experience of Henry.
To read that was liberating, in a way. I want to write about my kids because they are important to me and a lot of what I do involves them. But I don’t want to write about my kids in a way that would make them very angry with me later. I’m sure I’ve crossed that line in the past, but I am now conscious of it. Aware of it in a way I wasn’t before because while the idea was there, the structure necessary for formulating a plan or a rule was lacking.
Of course, I’m saying that very soon after writing about discussing puberty with my son. But I hope that I wrote that enough from my angle, through my lens and with compassion for his discomfort so that he would be okay with it if he were to read it as an adult. I think I did. I think I got it right. But just like the conversation about body changes itself - I probably won’t know if I did a good job until years from now. It’s one of those things we parents have to tuck away in our hope-I-didn’t-screw-this-up-too-much chests.
Aside from those things, I don’t publish our names or our location simply because I want to avoid surprise visits from people I know. I want to be in charge of that as much as possible. Keeping my name and state out of my text and comments allows me to feel I have some control. Some of you know where I am, either because I told you or because you’re not stupid. I’m okay with that because I can see you, too. Except for someone in California. It’s killing me. Comment or e-mail me, please. I just want to say hi! Or enable javascript, maybe? Pretty please?
The other thing I don’t do is write a lot of specific stuff about work. Partly it’s because I don’t want to get fired. If I have to work (and I do), I want to work where I work. But a bigger part of that is this: What I do to pay the bills doesn’t define me. I’m not a teacher or a lawyer or a doctor or a nurse or something else that I believe would be a big part of my identity. I go to work, I do my job, I go home. Some funny things happen at work and some NOT FUNNY AT ALL things happen that would be fun to write and read about. But I am confident that I can leave that out of my blog and you will still have a very clear picture of who I am and what I’m about and that you love me to teensy little bits and pieces.
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Just before I hit “Send”, I remembered Mike wrote about this same topic here a few weeks ago. It’s definitely worth a look if you’re wondering how other people come to different conclusions or if you’re trying to decide for yourself. Or if you just really like Canadians. \m/
