The great balancing act

comments 12
Life

Time and time again I log into the admin section of my blog, click to add new post and start writing. Minutes and several sentences later I delete everything I’ve written. Why? I suddenly get very aware that people are highly likely to read what I’ve written. For whatever reason I feel like I can’t have what I’ve written on my blog.

None of this makes any logical sense. The whole point of a blog, a personal blog at that, is to be able to write what you want to write.

However, with this being a personal and fairly public blog, I just get concerned about people who know me reading what I’ve written and not saying anything! Or saying something in a cryptic manner. Which, let’s face it, is just mean. And weird. Don’t be weird.

Yes, I am more comfortable with random Internet people reading my blog than people I know. Figure that one out.

So here I am trying to figure out the fine balance between over-sharing and, frankly, being boring. Or maybe I just need to be more comfortable with what I’m writing and putting out there on my blog. I’ll let you know how I’m getting along.

12 Comments

  1. You are not alone! I’m the same way – I typically prefer people I DON’T know reading what I write instead of people I know reading into everything I’ve written. I found that when the topic is far less personal, it’s easier to let people in. Like you said, it’s a balancing act. On my personal blog, few people I know actually read it. On my movie blog, I know more of the people who read it, and it bothers me far less–in fact, it’s actually nice to know people are reading!–because the content is far less personal.

    I’m sure what you’ve found over time from blogging is that many of your best posts are the ones you end up not making AS great of use of that backspace key and just let the words flow 🙂 I can’t say how many times I’ve done the same thing!

    • It’s strange how I can be more self-conscious blogging than I am in person. I don’t give a rat’s arse what people think about me in the street, but on here… it’s a different story!

      • Yea I’m a bit of the same way and actually, I don’t really tell anyone but my closest friends that I’m blogging. But at the same time, when I’m blogging, I often imagine I’m addressing them so as you say, it’s a balancing act 😉

  2. It’s the case with a lot you write on any internet site/forum. I know that my blog is read by my friends as well, but I usually write my opinions about movies, so in that respect they know already what I think about them. They usually don’t comment on the site, but talk to me about it, which I like.

  3. I read this post the other night and it got me thinking about how 10 years ago, when social networking wasn’t quite what it is today, it felt to me like my online presence was very much separate to the people I knew in real life because they didn’t care all that much for the internet. I was considered the ‘computer geek’ (their term, not mine). It wasn’t intentional, just kind of worked out that way and I grew accustomed to that, cherished it almost.

    But now everyone seems to be online and as wonderful as that may be to some, for me it’s been an adjustment. My family and friends know I have a blog but they don’t know the name/url of it, and it’s not like there’s anything on there that is overly personal but I suppose I like the feeling of having something completely separate from my offline world.

    • That is exactly it. It was so easy to be anonymous back then. You were only ‘online’ if you were on a forum and had some wacky nickname.

      The online world has just exploded and there’s no line between “online” and “offline” friends anymore. I liked it when it was separate, but then if I’d have kept it separate I wouldn’t have gone out and met a lot of my really good friends now.

      I think the main thing I won’t ever really be able to get used to is the fact that my family might be reading this blog (hello if anyone is!). I’ve been able to successfully keep my family separated from this world! That is mostly down to me repeatedly saying “Don’t join!” whenever my dad asks me what this facebook thing is all about.

  4. You should just write what you feel like writing and everyone else can suck it. Who really cares what other people think anyway. I am pretty sure thats what Hemingway said anyway 🙂

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