rethinking

I'm contemplating a reorganization of the blogs. Recently, discussing the whole world of personal online journaling with friends both local and elsewhere, I realized I am not entirely comfortable with lack of control of who reads what goes here, or the resultant self-censorship such uncertainty can cause.

Gone are the heady days when I'd get over 2000 "hits" in a month--mostly due to the promotion of a couple of the career posts on a popular site elsewhere. Now, according to the counter, I get around a dozen visits per day on this blog.

It's mostly the same folks, I suspect. Most I know, while a few returnees, such as the one from Egypt or the ones from England and Ireland, I don't know at all. (not that you're any less welcome)

A friend was telling me a bit more recently about the fallout of a relative stumbling across her blog and reading posts from back when this writer, now 20, was maybe 15 years old. Honest venting about family stuff was not intended for this or other relatives to read, and five years later, the feelings are no longer the same--but the words are still there.

I delete a lot of posts. Every so often I go through and wipe out the majority of those which have personal information--leaving only the "writing" ones I do for fun. I think I may just make this the blog where I do that--put the things I write for fun, or make occasional observations or comments on news stories, youtube videos, sports results and the like.

The "other" place I write would be where I put the personal stuff. Most of what you see right now below this post would fall into that category, with maybe the exception of the "quotes" post, and the Dythandra poem.

The audience of the other place is defined, and part of the deal is they know I write whatever I feel like there and if it's boring or annoying or stupid or offensive--it's my place to be self-indulgent. (Though all blogs should be that, to some extent, I suppose.)

Thus, if you don't feel comfortable with that, you won't be asking to be added to the readership. Also, it's easier to keep local (people who deal with me in real life) readership out of that blog, so if I were to go on a rant about something at work I wouldn't have to worry about some student or colleague having that inside perspective on how I really feel about something.

So, I guess what I'm saying is, if you see things change here, I haven't joined a cult, I've just become a little more circumspect. I may move some of the more recent posts below to the other site and delete them from here soon.

I could just write a journal, but as a young friend said recently, it's nice to know that someone could be reading what you write, even if nobody is.