Last month I talked a bit about, “naked blogging” (and no it isn’t sitting in your birthday suite before the computer screen!) being very open about your views and life, and also reading and commenting on blogs that are very open.
For the most part I have to say that some of my favorite blog reads are written by folks who are out there. They let their readers into the nitty gritty daily lives, warts and all. I feel almost like I KNOW these people. At least I know the parts that they have chosen to reveal (assuming everything everyone writes is always non-fiction!).
I have been kinda/sorta out there although I felt a little exposed of late as more of my real life friends and family are discovering and reading this little blog. Isn’t it funny that it’s easier to be out their open and honest to complete strangers in cyberspace than it is to the folks I actually know?
Last month I had the very unusual experience of my blogging life and my real life colliding. First, my very old EIFWAIL discussion/debate came to the front burner again when one of the participants found one of my old articles on the topic from last November. As that discussion heated up, my apologetics blog over at Visits to Candyland got real busy and some new blogs entered the fray. At the same time I started getting a lot hits from my town, probably because our new parish pastor, who is also a blogger, gave me a friendly link! It was a little much!
So while I could totally support and defend my EIFWAIL stand, and stand behind the work we do at Visits to Candyland, I was aware that in real life, not everyone might see it that way and if there were going to be confrontations (there weren’t) those would be real, and face to face. Not just writing on a computer screen.
My son Sam went to the rectory to pick up the key to the choir loft and ran into the pastor and the secretary. Sam later told me the secretary introduced him as “the son of that lady who has a blog.”
“Father didn’t ask you to tell me to come in for confession soon did he?” I inquired.
“Nope,” said Sam, “no one reads that stuff mom, they just look at the pictures.”
So what is so different about blogging now that the audience has a face? I think it’s the idea of really hurting someone’s feelings or offending them. Yet to stifle what I really want to say kind of takes away the purpose of having a blog in the first place. Is there a balance? Should there be? Instead of putting it all out there, blogging naked, is it time to don a robe?
Honestly, I think I’ve never taken mine off. I’m not as “out there” as many other bloggers. But I haven’t always shied away from controversy here either.
I also mentioned that last week I received a desk full of hundreds of letters written and received by my grandparents over the decades and that I have been going through them. As I was reading through these fascinating bits of history, I knew what I wanted to do with this blog and how I want it to read. I want it to be something that my granddaughter can read in 30 years and know about who I was and what I thought. I want her to see a woman of strong mind and convictions, delivered with charity, grace and humor.
And maybe that’s what blogging naked is all about anyway. Letting people see my thoughts, my faults, my life, my ideas and plans, and realize that all of it, the good, the bad and the ugly is what makes me who I am and this blog what it is. For better or worse – robed of not!
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