[Miscellany]

I've been thinking a lot about this blog and what the purpose of it is.

I wonder a lot if I should be locking it up and keeping it as a place to spew private and seedy bile only.  I toy with deleting all the non-musical posts and keeping it specific and I ponder living a life alongside a blog that has an identity such as "cooking blog" or "teacher tips".  Sometimes I have an overwhelming urge to just throw the address out to everyone I know and let them all feast upon me and then I wonder why I don't?

Clearly this is a public space - and yet it's so unbelievably private at the same time.  There are posts that are more private than others, of course, but some people (you) get to read them all - private or not they are there for you to read.  I've made the choice for them to be there.  So what am I hiding from those in my everyday life exactly?  What aspect of myself am I protecting by not being open?

This notion of private and public in the online world is very interesting to me - and not just because I'm questioning my role in it.  There are things that people who happen across this blog know about me that no one else knows and there are things that you will never know because they are part of my public profile (avatar? and now it is complete, the avatar is not only online).  I'm not sure which is more real, but often I think it's this person here - the one clicking at the keys right now... but perhaps not.  Maybe it's the person that attends parent/teacher meetings and lends a listening ear to a friend in need?  I especially wonder about my need to be noticed versus my need to feel private and protected and how that affects this public/private dichotomy of my identity.  I wonder if everyone or anyone else in the blog world feels like this too or if it's just me.

If I threw open the doors of this blog then what would it become?  Would it change?  Would I?  And is that a good thing?

Is your blog truly public?
How's that treating you?

Labels: blogs, friends, internet as village community, musings, Now I'm writing a blog post about it. Bizarre., private, public, questions, secrets, thinking, thoughts, wonderings, writing

posted by M at 11:07 pm 14 comments