Saturday, September 23, 2006

filters

i've been thinking of starting a completely anonymous blog and not telling any of you.

i struggle, when i blog, with how much to reveal. i treasure other blogs, particularly those of people i don't know (i know, i'm lame! i read strangers' blogs), for their frankness, and the bald honesty with which they discuss their friends and family. then i shudder, because i'm pretty sure those friends and families probably read those blogs. apparently, there's a new blogger service called vox which allows you to 'control your community of readers -- like, say, if you want to share stuff with your parents, without them also running into entries about the guy you hooked up with on Thursday night, or the time you vomited into their washing machine and managed to clean it up without telling them' (quote source: the fug girls) but it's invitation only, and besides, i'm not keen enough to go jumping from blogger site to blogger site, looking for the best possible scenario.

instead, i'll sit here and wrestle with how much i should talk about joel, for example. i know he reads this (hey babe, how was your weekend?) sometimes, and i have no secrets from him, but there's a difference between that and actually posting my thoughts about how i think one of his friends is an emotional bully, and how you can feel the tension in the room and the strained desires to both impress and avoid judgement, and how i prefer all of his friends (and himself, and even myself) when this one friend isn't around. and now, if i had a filter, i would block all of joel's friends from ever reading this particular post (if they even knew what a blog was, which i'm pretty sure they don't).

even harmless things, like the fact that my siblings and i recently discovered that we've all been using the thing-that-goes-over-food-in-the-microwave-so-that-it-doesn't-splatter-and-soil-the-micro-walls as a plate to cook things might not go over so well with my mother (hi mom, i think you're cute and i totally don't begrudge the fact that i'm slowly turning into you, though i hope i never have occasion to cook up fifty boxes of KD for no readily apparent reason).

and then there are times where my thoughts are subversive and angry and (usually) temporary, and i don't want anyone reading them, which is why i have thought about purely anonymous blogging. but then, i suppose that is what my good old pen-and-paper journal is for.

so, jer, i guess this is the blog in which i have nothing else to blog about except the nature of blogging itself (someone oh someone please teach me how to create links in my blog to other sites so that one of the words in the sentence is underlined and then when you click on it, it takes you to the blog that i mean, because i would link you RIGHT NOW to the blog of jer's in which he blogs about the nature of blogging, and does such a spot-on rendition of the average-blogger's-first-blog that i nearly peed myself).

1 comment:

Jane said...

It is with great joy that I share with you my extensive wisdom on linking.

To link to Jer's blog in your above post, simply highlight his name (double click on it)then click on the link icon (which I think looks like bull horns on a globe located next to the text-colour icon beside the bold, italicize icons.) Still with me?

Once you've opened up the link window, all you do is put Jer's URL address in the URL address box.
It is just that easy.

Once I figgered out the process, my next few posts were quite link laden, which happens I guess. I imagine yours will also. In my experience, it works best to type out your rant in its entirty, then go back and add the links.
And rather than typing in the URL addresses, I found it easier to have it copied to my clipboard, so all I have to do is paste.

Listen to me...giving instructions like I have a clue.

And by the way, I too struggle with the degree of honesty as well as appropriateness of topic in my blog. My writing was much freer when it was just my mom, sister and writing group reading. Having my ex-husband, his wife, my 15 year-old-son's friends, former pastors, and my boss etc. all checking in has hindered my style considerably.
Which may be a good thing. I do alot of praying and editing before I hit the publish button.