Eric's really showing me up with his near-daily blog updates. I guess I should try and compensate by relating some humorous tale.
Hmmm...Um...Oh! Eric accidentally locked one of our cats in the closet all day yesterday. Poor Sebastian. He clearly had made the best of things by the time I got home, nesting in the "darks" half of the laundry hamper. But he was all disoriented and squinty-eyed when I opened the door. I guess we should be glad that he didn't take it personally and pee on our jeans. Because, ew.
Okay, that wasn't very humorous. But isn't it interesting how substituting "children" for "cats" in the above paragraph would have made it right at home on the front page of a small town newspaper or, at the very least, a social services client profile?
So, way back when I was on Blogger, I made my first friend in the blogosphere, bicyclemark. It was a simpler time. A time before he became Feedster's Feed of the Day, a time before he was bustin' out the podcasts on a regular basis, a time before he was averaging 10 comments on every post. We were wide-eyed pilgrims stepping off the virtual boat to Bloglandia. We were riders at the gates of dawn and we took no prisoners. Now bicyclemark is a well-respected blog journalist and I can barely manage two posts a month. If I take my lame immigrant saga analogy one step further (some might say too far), bicyclemark would now be running his own wildly successful FunCycle™ factory while I beg for change on the corner. On slow days, he might let me grease a chain or two, but we both know it's only out of pity. Eventually, in desperation, I turn to organized crime and am forced to sleep with the fishes after cheating Danny "the Hook" LaPerla in a low-stakes game of Texas Hold 'Em.
Uh, anyway, recently bicyclemark wrote this post apologizing for and considering the nature of revealing personal anecdotes on a publicly viewable blog. He also links to A Blogger's Code of Ethics, which is interesting if you've got a blog along the lines of bicyclemark's, but pretty much irrelevant if you have a diary blog like this one. (But hey, for the record, that "riders at the gates of dawn" thing? From an episode of The Young Ones. What can I say? I just love the way it rolls off my keyboard. I still have a crush on Rik Mayall. I feel quite certain I've seen "Drop Dead Fred" more times than can be considered healthy.)
What does this have to do with me, me, me? Well, I was just drafting up (Yes, I draft. What?!) a new entry and found myself deleting two threads because they either involved other people or revealed too much about my personal life. Nothing seedy, mind you (horrors!), but something just this side of too much information.
Since blogs are basically public diaries (take a look at this very amusing Mimi Smartypants entry on the subject), it makes sense that you would feel compelled to write about your personal life/friends/experiences while simultaneously feeling paranoid about writing about your personal life/friends/experiences. But I hate it when I think I've got something really juicy and bloggable and my stupid, boring conscience creeps up, taps me on the shoulder and makes that "tsk, tsk" noise with its disembodied tongue.
Okay, ew. Again. Sorry.
Basically, what I'm getting at is, when it comes to blogging, sometimes you gotta just kick your conscience in its perfectly straight teeth and say "I'm throwing caution to the wind and writing about this because I want to, but dear lord I hope nobody involved reads it and completely flips out!"
Jump with me onto the merry-go-round of rotating knives*, bloggers! It's fun, and you just might grab a brass ring! Or possibly have a limb whacked off!
bicyclemark, like one of those lizards with the growy-backy tails, you'll be just fine.
*Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "Storyteller"
See? I'm totally ethical.
You can find more of the interesting word usements I structure on Apple.com.
Read my article, Better Writing Through Design, on No. 242 of A List Apart.