I have been opining a lot lately about the consequences of living in public. It’s been on my mind. It’s even made me mildly paranoid about blogging some personal thoughts on a few recent dates. Which worries me. People tell me they admire what I write because of its unflinching honesty, both about myself and my topic (which, sometimes, is myself). I feel like forces have been conspiring against me to prevent that. It started with what I will, in a bit of an on-the-nose manner, call an attack against me on my previous blog. I didn’t want to deal with it, so I moved here and started fresh. It’s worked, I think.
But earlier this week, I discovered that someone has been using my writing here and elsewhere online to snipe at a family member – a very dear family member who I may have referred to negatively on a very few occasions because of annoyance and don’t refer to positively enough because I am a curmudgeon and it is my natural bent to criticize instead of crow. Essentially, comments I have made have been taken out of context and used as weapons in some petty office politics squabble. It has made me seriously think about just calling it a day, at least on my current subject matter, and turning myself into a boring social media blogger or something. Not, mind you, that social media bloggers are inherently boring (many of them are, though); I’m simply acknowledging that I’d be one of the boring ones.
No.
This space (in its varying forms over the past four and change years) has been too intellectually and too spiritually gratifying for me (which is weird, considering how much of my output is about popcult garbage). This kept me sane in an unsane passage in my life. This lets me connect with the people that I care about who live in diverse places. This gives me a place to vent about how I shouldn’t still be hung up on women who clearly don’t give a damn about me* when I know that my friends don’t want me to talk about it to them. It is a chronicle of my idiotic, Peter Pan complex-riddled life, and it is valuable to me. If it is valuable to you too, that’s great, but also incidental. This is what keeps me out of expensive, expensive therapy.
With that said, if you’re reading this because you’ve compulsively Googled me in a need to get back at me or at someone close to me, stop being a dick. I’m not changing my behavior for you or because of you; I’ve done it once already, and I will not settle into a pattern of capitulations. If you need ammo, you’re likely to find enough words to twist any way you want. But at the end of the day, any damage that you cause is on you, not on me.
*I really need to repeat this to myself several times per day in a mirror.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Dude, I’m sorry you have to put with all this stuff. But you’re taking the right attitude. Really, when it comes down to it, you have no control over how people are going to twist your words to their benefit. Just have faith that you know what you mean and screw the rest.
Bill has spoken.
PS> check your e-mail later tonight.