The strangest part of becoming a Gap brand enthusiast wasn’t the surprise shopping spree. It wasn’t the giant box of jeans arriving at my door. It wasn’t even sending an e-mail to twenty friends about a party where I would give those jeans away. No, the strangest part was confronting the fact that I would have to reveal my blog. I cringed at the thought of hearing, “You’re not going to blog about this, are you?” and “Yeah, I read about it on your blog!” It would be mortifying, but tolerable.
In my e-mail invitation, I decided to frame the situation simply: I had an opportunity to try out the new line of jeans, and won’t you come join me? I steeled myself to answer any questions, but initially, very few people questioned anything. Until the party started.
One of my closest friends, a bridesmaid in my wedding, arrived first. “What’s this all about?” she asked at the sight of the jeans table.
“Well, the beginning of the story is that I have a blog,” I started.
“You have a blog? That I didn’t know about?”
“Uh, yeah… So I have this blog, and this marketing firm found me through it, so here we are.”
“But why would you have a blog if none of your friends knows about it?”
I had no answer for that. Why, indeed? I flailed around, sputtering about not sharing it because I want to protect JG at school, and I don’t use my real name, but I do post pictures, and so I clumsily made a very bad case for why I was not a Scary Internet Person.
Then, people started arriving all at once, and OPH and Mary Frances helped to explain the blog world. I was relieved not to be the only one to answer blog-related questions. “Mary Frances,” I called out, at a loss for words, “What’s my blog about? My life?”
I regret that I didn’t talk to my friend about the blog in a real way after being swept up in hostess duties. At the end of the night, I found out with a squawk that she had moved apartments a month ago, and we both realized all at once that we hadn’t connected in a very long time. So that didn’t help.
I e-mailed her on Monday with the link to the blog. I said I hoped it wasn’t weird that I had been writing all this time and didn’t tell her, and I apologized for being so flippant about it at the party. She wrote back and said that she was sad she didn’t know, but mostly because we hadn’t talked lately. We’re trying to set up a phone date for later this month, but I still feel sick to my stomach.
JG thinks that my friend was taken aback because I gave the impression that I didn’t want anyone to read my blog, but that’s obviously not the case because the site is public. It’s important to me to maintain a certain level of anonymity because JG is in the public school system, but I am having trouble navigating beyond that. I don’t know what the point of my secrecy is, exactly. I can understand why it would be hurtful that I would let complete strangers into this area of my life, but not open it up to my friends voluntarily. I’m having such a hard time parsing out in my mind why I have constructed this barrier in this way and why it is so important to maintain it. Maybe, like so many other things, this struggle comes down to my need for tidy little compartments, so the blending of my two worlds is too unnerving for me to articulate. I feel like I’m in one of those old sci-fi movies when someone is traveling through time, but the two selves from different times can’t see each other lest there be dire consequences.
16 comments
I also struggle with this issue. Many of my out-of-town friends know about my blog because I started it to try to keep in touch with them. Very few friends of mine who live in my city and I see on a regular basis know about it, with a few exceptions (1. the friend who introduced me to blogging in the first place and helped me get started; 2. the friend who has her own blog (and now her boyfriend and his friend, who also blog); and 3. the friend who started out as an out-of-towner, but moved to my city).
I think there are two main reasons I don’t tell friends who I see regularly about it. (1) I am kind of embarrassed about blogging and my “internet life” and “internet friends” around people who don’t understand/know the blogging world, and (2) I would feel more guarded about what I write, because when I write about my life, they sometimes show up as supporting players (although I do my best to protect their anonymity as much as I do mine) and I feel strange about having them read my take on things they were present for.
I have the same issue – I started keeping mine anonymous and secret because I’m a teacher, too, and I sometimes complain about student antics and so on, so I didn’t want my students, colleagues, or anyone connected with my job to read it. The first people who knew were my out-of-town friends, and then gradually I told some my nearby friends.
I still feel completely awkward about it though, and sometimes I regret telling some of the people I told. (My worst regret is that any of my family members know that URL. Aughhhh!) Sometimes I wish it were still completely secret, but then there are times when I want the people in my life to read something I’ve written, and that’s when I feel resentful that some of the friends who know about it either don’t read regularly or don’t leave comments. I feel like it’s hard to win on this one.
It’s up to every blogger to make up the rules, and they’re mostly based on our arbitrary beliefs on how safe we think the internet is. I didn’t want anyone to know at first, but then I got proud of my writing, and I just didn’t want my name to show up in Google searches.
Most of my friends and family know about my blog, very few of them read it and I can count the number of comments left on one hand. I’m not sure which is trickier to deal with.
But, for what it’s worth, I think you are fabulous and regardless of your blogging “rules”, I am glad we’ve “met”.
xox
This is such an interesting issue. I think it would maybe help if your friend understood that it wasn’t personal and it wasn’t necessarily about a loss of connection between the two of you, either. I mean, you don’t tell most people about your blog, even the ones you see every day. Right? So it’s not about her.
I also think this is a super interesting issue. To be anon or no? And how long can you stay anon if you choose to be so? And why? I know we have discussed many a time my desire to go anon, but for many of the same reasons (opposite side, of course) as yours, I have always stayed publicly known…
There are pros and cons to both, for sure. But making the switch over, even if it was for the best, would be hard for me because, like you, I am used to things being a certain way and would have a difficult time adjusting and re-compartmentalizing things. I could blog about so much more, because no one would know who I am! But would I even know how to be that open?
Very interesting issue!
It is a struggle for me, too! My husband and best friend know about my blog, although my husband doesn’t even read it. My family does not know. It started out as a place for me to just vent. And now it’s a part of my life. It’s weird not having everyone know about something that I spend so much time with, but it is a private place for me.
I was thinking about this after we chatted the other day. For me, the issue is that I don’t write about EVERYTHING on my blog. I write about little moments of vignettes, and rarely do I write about the most important item of the day. I had a friend once tell me that she always knew what was happening with me because of my blog, which was why she never asked how I was. That really struck home for me, the notion that I didn’t get to share anything with her because she already felt like she knew it all.
It is a tricky situation, isn’t it? I think I’ve told maybe two of my co-workers, both of whom are real friends, and maybe half of my real friends know about it. But then… I feel like my internet friends are also my real friends now, so I guess it just comes down to comfort level.
Yeah, this party brought up the same issue for me. Awkward.
oh, I struggle with this too. My friends and some family (including my mom) read my blog. I’m sooo guarded about what I say. I hate being offensive, but I know that my real-life friends love to keep up on my life with it… BUT i also know that it probably keeps us from having conversation and seeing each other, because they feel like they are keeping up on my life!
Interesting. I can’t imagine how I would feel if I found out a good friend had a blog and I didn’t know. I’d probably feel the way your friend did if I didn’t understand blogger world. But knowing how the anonymity helps you write about life (which includes the people in your life) I think/hope I’d understand!
Sometimes, all of this blog stuff is really strange. My blog isn’t a secret, and yet I don’t often tell my friends about it. I’m not hiding it…just sometimes I don’t feel like trying to explain it.
well, personally, i’m glad to know you have a blog, especially now that we’re moving away from you guys. don’t stress about it too much– bajillions of people have blogs and everyone approaches it differently.
I frequently run into people I haven’t seen in a while and they start talking to me about everything going on in my life, because they read my blog! It’s a little unnerving (although I’m putting myself out there, right?) but for someone like me (who loves people but is exhausted by being social for extended periods of time) it’s actually quite convenient.
Is your secrecy about it because you might feel the need to censor yourself if the people you’re close to read the blog?
I think this is a struggle for everyone. I am semi-anon, and that works for me, but it is still tricky. You can never guess what someone’s reaction is going to be. Some people think it’s awesome, read and comment all the time. (Or, like my mom, will call and say “I read about [whatever] on your blog, did you know this/let’s talk about it.”) Other people lurk, and then shut me down when I’m telling a story by saying “oh, I know. I already read about it on your blog”, which is a conversation ender. And some people think it’s totally strange and crazy and that having an “internet site” means I’m into some kind of kinky Star Wars or Comicon stuff and they’re weirded out. (I can understand that, because I used to feel that way!)
But my point is, once you tell someone, you can’t take it back and it’s impossible to tell how they’ll react beforehand. AND… there’s really no good way to bring it up! Hey, guess what, I have a blog! I mean… it’s just not that big of a deal! And you don’t want people to feel compelled to read if they just don’t get the whole concept.
The Gap party was super fun, but I’m sad that it’s caused you strife.
– Your Internet Friend Who Curses A Lot In Real Life, Sorry About That
I like to keep things separate too but with my blog it totally hasn’t worked. A friend of ours found out that I was starting a blog before we left WA three years ago and at the next church potluck, he got up and ANNOUNCED that I was writing this blog and everyone should check it out.
That’s always in the back of my mind when I write and consequently there are A LOT of things I don’t write about even though I’d really like to.
It’s also the reason I refused to add my FIL as a friend on Facebook. I don’t care if it looks rude, he’s got other friends.
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