Random thoughts on blogging

Reading Emily Gould’s piece on blogging in the NYT Sunday Mag yesterday made me think. I started this blog to record the changes Benjamin and I went through in moving here. All five of my gentle readers know most of that. Then it sort of morphed into a record of our lives for Benjamin—a way of recording his life, my thoughts, for the future. Something for him.

But as I was taught in English classes, can you really trust the narrator? Is this a bare sharing or an edited version? Of course it’s not completely bare, although some entries certainly are close. But most of what goes on in interior thought is not on these pages because it’s a permanent record. Or could be. And, to some extent, public.

Google me and this blog comes up first. Last week, during a difficult client interview, the really disturbed father looked at me and said, “I want more time with my son. You know, for things like kite flying.” I shuddered to think he might be reading the blog. He might. Anyone who can type my name in might.

So then I thought, especially after reading Emily’s piece, maybe I should take it down. But then, there are risks inherent in life. I haven’t taken any steps to obscure my identity because I don’t think that’s right, somehow. Knowing that the few of you are reading is warming to me, and I check the sitemeter regularly and try to imagine where you all are, how you like it, what might make you smile. I’m too cheap to upgrade, so all I know is geographical location when you log in and maybe your ISP. Most of you I know, some I don’t.

I appreciate other blogs I read where the author is known, a real person, not an identity someone slips into to post thoughts. But then, how do I really know? The identity can be, in the internet world, a somewhat fungible thing.

And right now? Ben is watching the Little Einsteins, and for the first time in forever, he’s actually doing what they ask—helping them blow to raise a balloon. And he’s doing that with a mouthful of cheese sandwich, his holiday breakfast of choice.

Peace, shalom, salaam, this Memorial Day.