Why I Blog

I have to admit that I am fascinated by the number of people who put their information out there on the Internet for the world to see. I have a blog, but with 98 percent of my entries (ok, really 99.5), I chicken out and post them friends-only, because I can’t handle not knowing who my readers are.

There are two legitimate reasons to account for some of my friends-only posts. First, I do tend to mouth off about my real-life friends. It’s great therapy, and it keeps me from feeling like telling Friend “A”, to her face, that I think her habit of crying if somebody eats cake in front of her “incorrectly” (all layers equally, in each forkful), is a disturbing neurosis and I don’t want her around my kids. The other is that I message board, and everybody who message boards knows that there has to be an outlet for online frustration, and a blog is exactly that. But because 75% of the time, I’m too much of a sissy to stand up to people I disagree with on message boards (the other 25, I’m a raging bitch with an impressive typing speed), I don’t have the guts to blow off snark in my journal without making it friends-only.

Despite the suggested bravado in having a blog, which is in itself an electronic exercise in narcissism (look at ME, read about ME, it’s all about ME), I do get the willies over posting pictures for just anybody to see, especially after that unfortunate incident involving a photograph of myself and a roommate in Halloween costumes a few years ago, that somehow wound up on a website devoted to voyeurs looking at sleazy women. While my roommate was mortified, I was rather flattered by the suggestion that I could even pass for something that people would want to pay money to see. Not a lot of money, but money nonetheless. Lately, my universe has been feeling altogether too small, and knowing that at one time, my photograph showed up on a moderately-visited website with a name that suggested I was easy, brought me small comfort and a glimmer of courage.

I was thinking yesterday that I would have to get over my fear of public posts, which I figured would be remarkably easier than getting over, say, one’s fear of peeing in public. Because without making any public posts, I’d say that my little neighborhood of possibly crazy 40-year old men with beer bellies living in their mothers’ basements while pretending to be young blonde techno-nymphs with names like hot4u and byteMe69, would stand to remain small and boring and safe.

And so I took the plunge – I threw out a public post with just enough details to peak someone’s interest, and with just enough good grammar and spelling to trick folks into thinking that I am an articulate, intelligent, 30-year old accountant who hates the sound of her own voice, but doesn’t so much mind the look of her own words, and so she blogs when she should be working. And even when she’s working, she thinks about her blog. Healthy? Probably not, but I like to surround myself by equally unhealthy bloggers who also think about what they should write in their blogs when something mundane happens to them in real life (and think to themselves, “how can I word this in my blog to make me sound really interesting and quirky and bloggy?”).

I left a few details about myself: I am a mother, so occasionally my blog falls into the dangerous and swirly soccer-mom zone, where I talk about things like parent-teacher conferences, and, well, poop, because all moms talk about poop - it’s inevitable. But I refuse to be defined solely by my girthy-hips status, and so I try to pretend, through the posting of carefully composed photographs, that I am a cool 30-something with a happening social life, and a voracious appetite for anything that comes in a bottle with a cork. (One of those two things is true.)

I wrote the post, I previewed the post, I took a deep breath and hit “send” – and then I sat back and waited for the masses of interested crazies out there surfing the broadband wave to line up to say hello to me, to chuckle at my wit, to express their intrigue – “I love soccer moms - tell me more!”. I waited, and then I waited some more. In 24 hours, I received one post from a total stranger, who appears to have not posted in his own blog in at least a week, and a handful of posts from folks already on my blessed friends-and-family list.

Maybe I should have taken the time to post some of those carefully composed photographs of myself – maybe my wedding day portrait! – to lure people in with my Photoshopped-good lucks and my sparkling smile. Maybe I should have funnier. Maybe I should have been less funny. Maybe it just wasn’t a busy day in journal-land, and nobody noticed my post. Oh, I’m sure I’ll be able to muster up the courage to carry on, but first I think I’ll visit a certain website to see if a picture of two twenty-somethings in sexy Halloween costumes is still there for the public to see.