I am officially obsessed. As you might have noticed, I got a hit-counter for this blog. As I write this, it has 5 hits, 2 of which I think are from me. I went from not being sure about having a blog because I'm kind of a private person to an attention-whore who just wants hits and comments. When I realized that people I have never spoken to have started to read this, the pressure to be entertaining mounted, though as you can see I am resisting it admirably.
So in order to get more comments, I am asking a question. Dear Readers, if you have a blog, do your friends and loved ones have the URL? Or are you using it as a private place to vent? I am asking this because I would really like my mom to read this. She would think it was very cool, as she has always wished I had become a writer. However, what if I want to complain about her? The same with some of my close friends or my husband. God knows I don't have that much to talk about that anyone would be interested in, so my only chance might be slightly entertaining rants about how they are irritating me. How often do you find yourself using your blog for this sort of thing? If your friends/family read it, do you find yourself censoring yourself a lot?
And Carlos, why don't you have your own blog yet?
Sunday, September 12, 2004
Love Me
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2 comments:
Good questions, all of them. I'm starting with the last one: Carlos doesn't have a blog because we selfishly want him to write on ours. ;-)
As to posting private stuff - we have rules. We are not writing about family feuds and spousal squibbles, we don't complain about relatives or friends, and I don't mention my friends by name, unless I know that they don't mind. Ditto for coworkers and work-related matters. And we always let emotional posts sit for an hour or two, to be re-read (and most re-written) before posting them.
This puts up constraints that are not always practical, so I do make the occasional exception. I had a hard time deciding whether to write about my stillborn baby boy. In the end I did, because for me it was like putting up a memorial and I didn't want him to be forgotten. It also affected and still affects us in a way that might be reflected on the blog - so I thought our readers should know why we are acting like nutcases these days.
Belle Waring used to bitch about her husband on the blog that belongs to both of them. One day, she rightly pointed out that this wasn't fair, gave a distorted picture of their marriage to people who don't know them personally, and wasn't very interesting for strangers. (The latter wasn't quite true - it had the quality of a good soap opera.)
Once you post something, it's there for others to keep, read, comment about, build an opinion on. It's not private anymore.
Our blog started out as a private blog for our relatives, to keep them up to date about the kids and our lives (we're expats). Nowadays, my Mom reads it, and occasionally by SIL, but that's it. OTOH, we have about 100 other readers from all over the world. They are more interested in Romanian economic data or the traffic, than whether Doug brings the trash out (he does, BTW). So that's what they get, plus the obligatory amusing kid story and picture.
Hm.
Does this regurgitation help at all? Thought not. :-D
Well. Keep on writing, and we'll keep on reading.
Claudia
Well, I am thinking about setting up a mirror site, maybe with additional personal content, because I can't imagine that Claudia's Romanian and Serbian readers are all that interested in my pie recipes, let alone The Unprepossessing and Rather Depressing Adventures of Eeyore in Brooklyn. You know:
September 12. Everyone is down today. Travelled up and down Seventh Avenue looking for a smile like Diogenes looking for a honest man. No luck. What happened? Oh yeah. Maybe I will watch the game. Jets versus Bengals, oh that should be worthwhile. I should make another pie. Hm, Dallas is playing the Vikings. Can they both lose? Sadly, no. Maybe raspberry sour cream pie! And I could finish that cheerful J.G. Ballard novel. It has to pick up at some point.
See what I mean?
And you can complain about me here any time. Compared to some of the allegations about me on the Internet...
Carlos
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