Monday, August 18, 2003

I remember seeing a Friday Five or similar question meme in my early days of blogging that asked if you kept your blog secret from your family and closest friends or if you were open about it with everyone. I wasn’t sure how to answer, because at the time it was a little of both. My sister knew, of course, she was the one who started me in the world of blogging. But my parents didn’t know. And I did email some specific friends with the URL, I have friends all over the country and I knew the blog would be a great way for them to keep up to date on my life without having to send mass letters or emails. But there was a large group of people in my daily life that had no clue, because I didn’t want them to have a clue.

So today, this question came back to me with an email from my mother. She and Dad had our new pastor and his wife over last night. I asked what they talked about and she mentioned that they had talked about my blog (what!?) and a discussion we had had over lunch yesterday about a couple of the theological discussions at Thinklings.

I have to admit to a fleeting moment of unease at the thought of my pastor knowing about my blog - my narcissistic rants, snarkiness, complaints, whining, not so kind stories, links to maybe questionable sites, etc. And I responded to my mother’s email with the following:

Hmmm, it makes me a little nervous when you mention my blog to some folks. Not that I’m too worried about the content - but there are some folks that I’m not sure would appreciate it or get it. I don’t know. Of course, if you had objections to anything on my blog you wouldn’t have mentioned it to our pastor, right?

What’s funny is that while my thoughts, snarkiness, picture, etc. are published for all to see on the WWW, I somehow think I can keep it a little bit secret from some friends and family. I think once you and Dad knew about it and started visiting regularly, I had no chance to keeping it low key.

Not that I’m sharing my deepest, darkest thoughts or feelings. There’s plenty of my life that I don’t share here and don’t plan to share here. I won’t talk about my love life, if I ever get one. I won’t talk about family arguments. I won’t talk about church disputes. I won’t talk about matters in my job that are to be secure - unless it makes the news or is in the public domain already. I won’t name names of people in my stories - to protect their privacy. If they comment, then they’ve opened themselves up and that rule may change. And there are a bunch of other self imposed guidelines I won’t bore you with. This is my online journal. I’ll talk about what I want to talk about, be it traffic, my job, my family, my church, my politics, my dog, whatever.

So let me ask you, my fellow bloggers - how secret is your blog?