Dragonflies, Butterflies & Lady Bugs

Blog Thoughts

It kind of goes without saying, I guess, that what you read here is a small piece of who I am and what I think. You get to read what I decide you can read, you only hear my viewpoint and I could even control whether or not you could reach me for feedback.

A friend of mine decided to take a sabbatical from blogging. After reading her last online entry -- maybe ever -- I started thinking about the relationship I've had with my blog in the past year or so. I started blogging in November 2003. Not many of you have read me that long. I think most people started reading about a year ago, when Jasmine was dying. At any rate, when I started, it was just to have a place to ramble a bit... I like to write with a keyboard, which makes me pretty much the antithesis of every other writer I know, but hey, it's hardly the first time. A few of my friends were reading at that time and that awareness kept me from really using this in the way I would use a true journal or diary -- that has always been the case and probably always will.

Then Jasmine got sick and my life sort of exploded a little and this blog became a place to update people on what was going on as well as a place to work through my feelings about it. Through all that I wrote mostly about my family, what we were going through and just general life stuff. I branched into politics a bit prior to the election, but haven't really gone there since. It's too painful. ::grin::

Lately I've posted a bit in this blog and others about my marital problems, my community concerns and of course, my children. I think of this blog as sort of a large email that I send out to my friends to let them know how I'm doing. Occasionally someone gets the "email" randomly, and that's okay too.

I wanted to be braver with my writing -- to really use this as a journal, but I realized I simply can't do that. I can't post about the people I love here (at least not in any way that might be hurtful) without it having an impact. I've been reminded recently that I need to simply keep the "real journal" stuff out of this blog, as Diaryland doesn't allow for the same kind of filtering that LiveJournal does. Not only does it hurt my loved ones, but it can cause alarm too (my parents were afraid my bags were packed and I was leaving Jeff the day after I wrote about our problems). Anyway, the posts I'm most comfortable sharing here are about my family or about the general state of my world. And I guess that's okay. It has to be. Because as much as I'd like to just say, "It's my diary and if you don't like what I write, too bad, don't read it," I can't. By putting it in a public forum and not locking it down, I forfeit that right.

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