Public Anonymity

My friend Manu talks about writing personal entries.

I’ve had my own battle about this subject matter.

I started writing this site about a year ago. For the first few months, I didn’t really know what to say and I spent too much time reading different logs and emulating their styles. I wavered back and forth between posting links and short vignettes and opinions, etc. I was very aware of my audience and the need to please them. And pleasing an invisible audience is a very difficult task.

I spent the first few months concentrating so much on how many hits I got and whether my visitors came back for more, that it didn’t occur to me to worry about divulging personal information. I remember telling a few coworkers about my page and feeling slightly weird about it for a little while.

And then everything went downhill from there. I went through a bout of utter discomfort about my content. I kept questioning every idea, pausing on every word and it got to a point where writing a post became more torture than fun. And what’s the point of doing this if it’s not gonna be fun?

I emailed some of the people whose sites I read, ones who published content that I considered very personal. I asked them how they managed to feel comfortable divulging so much about themselves and the people in their lives. I read their thoughts and I thought.

I thought for a long time.

Finally I came to the conclusion that it’s a lot of work to read my site daily. Or even once a week. I write long entries that require more than glance and a click. Most people would probably get bored before they hit the third line. So if anyone actually bothered to read my site religiously to find out my personal thoughts, opinions, feelings on things, they can be my guests. At that level of dedication, they deserve to know everything about me.

As someone intelligent once said, “If you stopped worrying about what people think of you, you’d notice how little time they spend thinking about you.”

So I made a few rules; I rarely mention names (since my friends might not share my opinions on not needing anonymity and they deserve their right to privacy), I don’t say anything that I would mind someone repeating back to me, I don’t post issues that I am extremely touchy on or news that I’m not ready to tell the world, yet. I also choose the people I tell about my site. I don’t explicitly tell any family member, work mate, or really close friend about it.

That’s about it.

If people track me down using a search engine and find the site on their own, than they’re welcome to read all about me. So far, this system has worked wonderfully for me. I write what I want and I really haven’t gotten email or comments about anyone that made me anything short of proud of what I write.

I think the call on how much you divulge is totally yours. If you don’t want to get personal, don’t. But if you do and feel constrained by an invisible audience maybe you should rethink.

After all, like your life, you should be the one who has control over the contents of your site.

Previously? Meanie.