Coming clean
OK, as it’s past 6 p.m. and I *just* remembered to heat up my lunch, I figure I need a brain (and, thus, BLOG) break.
So. *tapping foot* When do you do it? How do you do it? Or should you not do it at all?
No, sillies, I’m not talking about it. (The answer being “as soon as possible” to THAT question!) What I mean is when do you reveal your dirty little secret that …
*gasp*
… you’re a blogger?
When you, oh I don’t know, meet someone new — someone you’d like to, gee let’s ponder this for a second, IMPRESS — are you upfront that you have a crazy page where you spew verbal dysentery on a regular basis? Or do you just skip that part of “I like long walks on the beach and cuddling and puppies and sunshine and rainbows and OH YEAH I keep a page where I share my personal vitriol with all the world!”?
Just because I splay my heart on this page doesn’t mean I want to immediately hand over said heart to someone who walks into my life. I share more than I should here and there ain’t no WAY to keep any mystery alive in a relationship when they can refer back to this page when they’re wondering “WTF was she thinking?!?!” when I go off on one of my assorted tangents.
And that’s the thing — you CAN go off on tangents when you think no one’s looking. But if they’re going to find your page eventually, well, you can’t exactly talk about them. 😉 Unless you’re complimenting anything regarding size and prowess (I would actually be bragging, if I were so inclined to share! *mwah!*), it’s best not to mention nothin’ without express permission. But to get said permission, one must ‘fess up to the blog addiction.
So anyway, I was just wondering how y’all share your sites with people (romantic interests, family, friends, colleagues, employers — anyone who might find it so you might as well own up to it anyway in the first place)? Is it like a third-date thing or can you shelve it for awhile longer?
June 22nd, 2006 at 7:22 PM
I have no idea how you tell them. Hell, I don’t even tell my closest friends about it. Part of me has this fear that I’ll be walking into TheUsualPlace and people will suddenly hush and start wispering about me. I’ll walk up to the bar and I’ll hear people saying “Oh yeah, his url is…” “Did you read what he did with So-and-So?” “I wonder who Ft Lauderdale is…”
I think that’s my version of the going to school nekkid dream.
June 23rd, 2006 at 9:39 AM
Clearly, it was not a problem I had socially. But professionally… well, that’s a whole separate issue. My big question is who at my company gets to know about the blog? Do I trust them to get it? And when?
And then, what’s even weirder, is when I run into professional contacts from outside the company who read the blogs. This includes a reporter for a local business publication, who luckily is really nice and actually thinks my rantings are entertaining. Apparently MPOJ is making the rounds of the newsroom there.
June 23rd, 2006 at 11:33 AM
No one at work knows and I can’t post it on my myspace either b/c I have co-workers on that. Some people that I don’t know personally read it and my bf reads it.
I have a seperate one that I do all my personal feelings rants on. That one is locked up with a key and shoved far into the hells of cyberspace.
Besides, I am not sure how entertaining people really find my blog.
June 23rd, 2006 at 5:09 PM
Family and friends, exclusively. Never romantic interests. Don’t know why, just seems safer. Boss and co-workers, hell no!! Lesson learned through many examples on that one.
Of course, now I have to update it (my blog)in a big way.
It shall be up this weekend!!!!!!
June 23rd, 2006 at 11:35 PM
Fortunately, my boyfriend had a live journal for years before I met him. On our first date, he showed me the list he’d made of what he was looking for. I guess he was awed that I matched up so many of the items on his list and that we fit so well (it was a helluva date, all 27 hours of it).
Within a few days, he’d posted about our date and I got to read it. I told him about my blog, too, on our first date. So it was never an issue.
Besides him, there are three people in my real life that know about my blog, two are close friends. I’ve met other bloggers in other cities, but for the most part, aside from boyfriend who reads my blog every day, I don’t get confronted with people in my real life knowing about my blog.
The last person who knows about it is my daughter. We have a pact. I don’t read her myspace, and she doesn’t read my blog. Although, occasionally, I’ve let her read a post here and there in word before they were posted, she doesn’t even know where it is.
Maybe at some point she’ll get super curious and find it and read it all. If and when it appears that’s going to happen, I will go through and purge every negative thing I’ve ever written about her dad, my ex-husband. I needed to write it out, but there is no need for it to stay online forever.
June 24th, 2006 at 6:22 PM
I don’t have a hard and fast rule. I take it case by case. Try to feel out if people “get it” or not, first. What’s sort of tripping me up here is that I’ve linked the metblog to my personal blog. I’d probably be okay with using my own name on metblog, and telling, say, my co-workers that I write for metblog if they couldn’t then follow the linkage back to my personal blog (assuming they were smart and curious enough to do that).
It didn’t take me long after meeting her to ‘fess up to my gf. I have asked her permission to post certain things, and she’s exercised veto power on a couple things. Some of my friends sort of knew about my blog before they even knew me (which still kind of blows my mind). A few of my friends I’ve mentioned it to and couldn’t keep ’em interested for the life of me.
June 25th, 2006 at 12:28 AM
To the extent that I am hiding behind my nicknonymity (not its main purpose) it is friends and family that I am hiding from. Those around me are far to the left of me; it is simpler to avoid the subject of issues.