How do you decide how personal to get in your blog posts? How much do you put out there on the web for anyone in the whole wide world to read? I tend to think the only people that read my blog are my friends, but I know that’s not true. But if I don’t keep that in mind, I tend to write as if I’m communicating only with friends, and there are things I tell friends that I don’t want some guy in Tuscon to know.
I have friends who’ve made some pretty soul-baring posts. Depression, porn, and abuse on the bad side, intimacy with God and family on the good side. Where’s the line?
A few weeks ago I mentioned some things on my blog about our debt, and the next day my wife mentioned that it made her a little uncomfortable that I’d done that. The reason that’s so impressive is that my wife never reads my blog. Only if I specifically ask her to read a post will she go there at all. How then did she find out? My mother-in-law told her.
I knew she read my blog because she often comments. But it didn’t really click that anything I wrote, she would read. Who knows why. But today she posted to my Firefox post wondering what it meant, and it occured to me that there are people who read my blog who aren’t always as deeply in tune with Geekness as me.
So my new litmus test is whether or not my mother-in-law should learn about it on my blog, and whether it would make any sense to her at all.
Hi Kathy! 😉
I don’t really have a stated policy for what appears and what doesn’t but looking back on what I post, I suspect I do have an unstated one. It probably goes something like this:
1. Don’t post anything that I wouldn’t say to a casual acquaintance.
2. Don’t post anything that I wouldn’t want a future employer to read…
To judge from what’s on my blog though, I’m perfectly willing to bore a casual acquaintance with more than they likely want to know about computers.
I see and now the question is should I check out the BLOG to see what the grandchildren are doing cute or not. I didn’t mean any harm about my comments. Personally I think the BLOG is a great family link but then again there are some wierdo’s out there preying on us innocent people.
If there’s something I don’t want people to know, I won’t put it on there. I used to say nothing about the fact that I had kids or was married. But they’re a part of my life, so I can’t exclude them that way. And God’s in control. No freak is going to come get my kids unless He lets them, and if that’s where He’s taking us, my not blogging about it won’t make any difference.
I tend to forget that other people read my blog too. In fact, sometimes I just write and forget that anybody reads it. Good thoughts, and I like your litmus test!
I have varying levels of posts set up. Public, friends, and distant friends. The friends stuff is simply for people logged into that service (LJ), the distant friends is for peeps I never hang with anymore because they live, well, distant ;-).