A good freind questioned me about the extent to which I “share the depressed side of me” on my weblog. My first reaction to that is that I constantly restrain myself from doing so. What gets out to the weblog is often muffled from what I actually FEEL like saying, but want to “spare” my audience. On the other hand, some basic facts like being un-employed and that the extent to which this, on some days, really affects my “energy”, I feel are crucial information to some sense that the readers are actually reading ME, and not a “cleaned up” edited copy.
Sure, there are some instances where I think “I didn’t need to put “that” up there — some things even “leak” out; slipping past the filters that I DO employ to keep some of the most negative or what prove to be “momentary” succumbings to the “when will this ever end” and “I’ve really messed up this time” feelings. To say that I have those moments, in this case, is enough. The details are not useful even to the most ardent of “self-disclosure” advocates in the weblog world.
My point is that SOMETHING needs to be said to recognize those times, and to “every so often” acknowledge that such is the case. If I didn’t do this in MY weblogging, how could I advocate the real potential of online communication to help us be in community with one another? Besides, right now, the folks who would tend to look negatively upon my revelations/signs of weakness would most likely not be reading weblogs at all. They’re the ones that scoff at what Weblogs represent. The people who value this kind of thing represent the audience and the “potential employers” I want to work for.
Aside from all that, I think one has to look pretty hard and read often on my Weblog to see all of this. The friend that brought this up was himself somewhat floored by an email I sent to a few friends expressing the desperation I felt to find SOMETHING, again going back to the argument that people who read my weblog would not neccessarily have known (supporting my argument that I don’t “let it ALL hang out”). AFTER this email, to which my friend replied “I had no idea” and was apologetic for not having been more “aware”, the Weblog may seem to contain a lot more “vulnerability”, since the “references” and mentions of various things would now take on a different flavor.
I think I’m being tasteful. (That’s not the best word for it….maybe “balanced” is the best word). “Tasteful” almost sounds too “polished” or too “edited” for what I consider to be the healthy aspects of weblog writing. I try to make my writing “VOICE-y” whether I’m “commenting” on an issue or a bit of news, or if I’m weaving in a bit of my life’s events. Maybe I’m not “good at it”. Maybe that’s not the real point.
This is still ME, adding a footnote/comment, in defense of the friend whose private comments to me in email spurred this post. THat friend is NOT one of those from whom the more “vulnerable” posts need to be hidden. He was simply trying to protect me from what he (and I also) consider to be an oft-cruel and insensitive business world. Even worse, this “business world” sanitization is prevalent in the Church as well.
My friend included in his email to me outlining these concerns, that he wants to talk “offline” and is working to pull together a group of like-minded, equally passionate-about-Online technology folks, so that I have a place to verbally engage with people who dream similar dreams. All of this happens behind the scenes, offline, as a part of the larger self that I am, which includes the part that “rants” in my Weblog. I am only half-serious or half-joking when I describe posts in this weblog as “rants”, since many of those express some deeply held beliefs. (So is the glass half empty or half full? I think the latter)
So, the points are well-taken, appreciated, and received with the “care” with which they were intended, and also provide a nice, prickly example of a point to debate about “the content” of community and the “level of safety” provided by some “online places”.