Sunday, February 12, 2012

The Dangers of Blogging

My very first post on this blog, which was back in January 2010, ended by saying:

"*For my friends/associates/ex lovers and the like who may read my memoirs and see yourselves in these stories, don't be mad! It only means you were on my mind"

Even with that warning, I knew there could possibly be people who may still get offended, upset or hurt by things that I write here. However it never fails to catch me off guard when someone tells me they didn't like something that I wrote about them. Why you ask?

1. I rarely get comments on here, so I assume the number of people who actually read this blog is preeeetty small. It isn't until someone quotes something I said or brings up a topic I wrote about that it really does hit me that there are more eyes on this blog than I thought. So making people upset but what I put here, definitely is not something I would intentionally set out to do, but when I'm blogging and purging my thoughts on a certain topic or experience, the last thing I'm honestly thinking about is how the subject of the post might feel if they were to read it. That may sound callous but it's MY blog. 

2. I never, not ever, use people's real names if I'm writing about an intimate experience. By intimate, I'm not referring to sex so don't try and scroll back through the posts to see if you missed something juicy, nasties :-) I don't even use physical descriptions of people!

3. I never thought that the men I know could actually feel some type of way about the things I write here. 

Wow, that sounded a bit insensitive... but it's true. I know men with some pretty big egos. They have confident auras and often seem like nothing ever phases them, so if/when I get called out for something I wrote here, it shocks me; and it's happened more than once. 

Having come to the reality that, look chic, folks read your blog and may actually pick up on context clues and piece puzzles together and find themselves staring back at them on the computer screen, I'm forced to ask myself the question whether some situations are too personal to write about? I completely understand that that's what people want to read, the gritty interesting stuff, and honestly that's what I want to write about, but do I want to make people upset in the process?  Should there be a filter?

I'm no Carrie and this isn't Sex in The City. There are real people in this blog and real emotions behind them. In the midst of purging my soul here and in return getting free therapy, could I potentially be scaring(for a lack of a better word) guys off because they don't want to end up as my next blog topic?

Food for thought.

3 comments:

  1. Short answer..no. Write whatever you feel and if it's therapy for you than that's even better. And I doubt you are scaring anyone off. They should have no intention on doing anything that would warrant being written about...unless it's good things of course.

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  2. Keep writing about your experiences. Their reaction is only because you've held a mirror up to their face and allowed them to see the truth (their flaws) and that's never an easy thing accept, for anyone. The important part is to learn from it and work to become a better person.

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  3. Thanks for the encouragement ladies! Lord knows, I didn't reeeeally want to feel like I should "censor" my blog in order to protect other people's feelings. I figured I would pose the question though so i could see what other folks thought.

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