Someone Might Actually Read Your Weblog
Will: “It's one of the reasons I have stopped posting about my political opinions here because I know that they would raise more than a few hackles among the primarily conservative parents in my district.”
There's a lot I don't mention (but could) on my weblog. Like some friends' names, discussion about my family—a couple of recent entries excluded—or my health. There's a lot I do talk about that tends to make me look a lot more neurotic than I feel. A career goal of mine is to be a teacher, and if that goal is achieved, eventually what I've written will come back to me, perhaps to my advantage or to my disadvantage. While fearing the worst, I still know what the benefits of having a weblog are, and they still outweigh the risks and disadvantages. If my parents started reading my weblog, well, they'd find that I'm not necessarily the guy they think I am. Granted, everybody deals with people differently according to their relationship with them. But still, the public Richard isn't quite the same as the private Richard.
Everybody censors themselves when they write. Yes, even the ones who say that they write what they think. Even they can't write everything that they think or feel, usually because a lack of time, a lack of initiative, or an appreciation for the risk being taken when writing. (There are some who seem to not appreciate the risks associated with writing what they write. Sucks to be them.) There are occasions that would necessitate not blogging for a while—you'll know it when it happens, and you'll ask why, and I probably won't tell you. There is and there always will be subjects that I think are either boring or too personal, although this weblog has been quite the personal weblog lately. The main point of the above is that when you write something in the public realm, even on a weblog that gets two hits a day (both of them being you), there's always the risk that someone other than you might actually read it.
Time passes. Adam reflects on the fact that his future students' parents may be read his weblog:
What really scares me is that via Google my petty, childish, fear-ridden, soul-dumping posts will be laid out before the parents that I need to look in the eye on Parent-Teacher night and inform them that their son or daughter isn’t exactly a star pupil. I don’t want to sit there with a twinge of fear niggling in the back of my brain over whether their response will be, “well, maybe he/she would be doing better if you weren’t such a poor role-model.”
