On blogging

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This blogging business is a hard gig, I have to tell you.

Blogging is different to an online diary. A diary can be a place to hang out and air out - a place to relax with friends over a cuppa or a glass of wine or whatever. In a diary you can spill your guts and say almost whatever because you can make it Friends Only and only a trusted audience can see it...or if you want to just really let out all your angst, vitriol or hatred and everything that's rotten and evil about yourself you can just pound on the keys and hit Private.

Not so with blogging. The purpose of a blog (I have to keep reminding myself) is to get your thoughts out there, to tell a story, to be read, gain readers and have feedback. It's public. It's public. It's public. 

I must remember that.

It's public. 

That means everyone can see it. (der!)

So blogging requires different language. Blogging requires honoring people with anonymity or honoring them by not writing about them at all. Blogging requires permission from others sometimes.

Blogging does, in a way, require self-censorship. Is it okay to post this? Have I gone too far? Have I said something that may hurt someone close to me? Blogging means that you have to re-read, re-edit, re-think, re-write and sometimes keep something in Drafts until you're sure or hit DELETE when you're not. I need to learn when to use the DELETE button.

In the blogging world I am surrounded by people who blog in all sorts of different ways and with different voices. There are some that stick to a theme - like crafting or homemaking, there are the Mummy-bloggers, there are the blogs that review movies and books and products, there are the activist blogs. Some people share a little, some people share their thoughts, some people stick to their theme religiously and some people share EVERYTHING - or so it would seem - births, deaths, addictions, mental illness, sex, falling in love, falling out of love, their child's firsts - first poo, first bath, first breastfeed, first chuck. It's hard sometimes to find your own voice and work out what you're okay about sharing and what other people are okay about you sharing about them.

I'm still trying to work this out. I'm still trying to find my blogging voice. I'll get it terribly wrong sometimes. I may write things that hurt the people I love the most. It's unintentional, but I understand that it will happen. Maybe being out there "on display" has made me insensitive to those that aren't and clueless when it comes to identifying what's okay to share and what isn't. In any case, I choose to remain open and teachable when it comes to learning about this and hope that those who love me will love me enough to let me know when I've overstepped a line.