I have been tooling around with a massive blog idea in my head for a few weeks. Basically a brief history of me. What triggered this is Facebook. I have friends on Facebook who only know the me I am today and friends who knew me when I was a kid or a teenager. Those two people are pretty different people. I have been thinking it's time to tell the stories of who I was, what changed and who I've become.
But here is where I am challenged right now. My stories are just that, mine. My point of view, my life, my changes, my challenges. But the people in them are real people who have their own points of view and their own lives. And they do intersect now. When I first started blogging (on myspace originally) I didn't really worry much about who was reading what I wrote. My niece and my nephew were on, but no one else in my family. When I switched to Facebook it added Brent to the mix, but he knows my stories and my point of view already. But now more and more family is in the mix. My sisters are both on, my son, my niece, my nephew...the list grows. And since I post a link to my blog on my Facebook page it's there for everyone to see.
Oddly enough I have never really worried much about Christopher reading my blogs. I know he enjoys them because he has told me as much. I know if he has questions about them he brings them to me. And I know that they give him a look at who his mother is as a person separate from just being his mother. I am hoping that it's a good thing for him. But who knows, maybe in a few years he will be telling his therapist that he ended up knowing things about his mother that no kid should ever know!
But here I sit now with the story of me bumping around in my head and I am torn between posting it, no holds barred, this is my point of view or editing and filtering and worrying about whose feelings might get hurt and will it cause issues in the family by digging up past grievances and all of that murk and mess. It's a challenge. I am pretty much an open book at this point in my life. Ask me a question and I will give you an answer. I don't do guilt, I do have regrets but I am who I am because of all of the things that happened in the past to bring me here. But does that give me the right to tell my story where it includes other people in a not so flattering light? They have also changed and are not those people anymore, but they were. Is it okay to tell the story anyway, knowing that it might be painful for them to read?
In this new land of social networking, how much do you share? And do you worry about it? Do you mix your lists? Friends and co-workers and acquaintances and family? Do you think about it when you post a status update? Do you automatically filter what links you post? What do you say knowing that your co-worker, child, spouse, neighbor will see it? If you are a parent do you have your kids on your friend list? Kids do you have your parents? Do you worry about what you post about your work worried it will be shared with people you didn't intend to see it? Do you check with friends before posting things that pertain to them?
In past blogs I have skirted the issue by not naming people. Anyone who knows the story already knows who I am talking about but others reading it don't have a name to match up so they know there was a person who did a thing, but not who it was. I can't really do that while writing about growing up. Not really a way to mask family right? There was this girl who lived with us...doesn't really ring true. So what do you do? Filters or no? Edited or raw?
For anyone who knows me well you know I am going to write it anyway. It's my story. It might not match up with their story, but that's okay. It's mine. I will post disclaimers as necessary. Clarifications as needed. But it's going to be the story of me, the way I saw it, the way I remember it, the way it shaped me into who I am now. And it will most likely be a multi-day blog like I have done in the past. So buckle up, it's going to be a bumpy ride.
You go girl!
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