I hope you haven’t taken my distance personally, Internets. A large part of my shyness comes from another appearance by what very likely is my ex-husband’s ISP in my stat logs. (Yes, it’s possible that someone else logging in from Arizona State in Tempe has been stopping by off and on in the past year or so. But at least one of those people searched Google for my maiden name, then searched this site for the words “husband,” “marriage,” and “Paul,” too. Doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure that one out.)
I can’t help but feel weirded out — like, if you’re going to the trouble of seeking out my website and spending significant time here, why not say hi? He has every reason to hate my guts and never want to communicate again; however, our last emails lots of years ago seemed friendly enough. I figured that his reluctance to reply meant that he wanted to enforce the distance between us, which, though not my preference, I have to respect as the bad guy in our marital equation.
It was also mildly alarming to see my parents’ ISP show up in my logs a couple of weeks ago. Could have been some other person from my hometown locale, of course, but it startled me nonetheless.
Still and all, repeated hesitance to hit “Publish” has made it harder and harder to feel like anything I’ve written lately is worth the button. I’ve put a lot of thought and energy these past few weeks into a project I’m not yet comfortable writing about.
LLA says:
July 8th, 2006 at 7:38 am EDTVisit LLA
I’ve missed you, that’s for certain - particularly as it seemed like things slowed down here about the time I showed up! (Hope that’s a coincidence….)
I think, though, that I understand the weirded-out feeling. Well, scratch that, I don’t understand your particular weirded-out feeling - but I’d be weirded out, too, in the situation that you describe.
I have started to struggle with the “when my blog life and my real life intersect” thing….
It’s strange, a woman with whom I work is a real crafty girl. I didn’t know this, as our paths didn’t cross very much. But of course we ended up visiting the same sites, and she (of course) recognized my initials in comments that I made. (in retrospect, I probably should have made up a clever name for myself, instead of using the same dorky nickname that gets used in real life…) She then discovered BadFortuneCookie - and read it for weeks before she came up to me at work and announced that “she knew my secret identity!” Which was totally disconcerting, since I hadn’t thought of it in that way….
Although, in that case, it turned out OK - we actually discovered that we had lots of common interests and have started a friendship. Which is nice, but it made me realize that “wow - there really are people who read this thing…” And it makes you feel a little overprotective about keeping that distance between the two spheres.
For example, I have never told my mom that I have a blog. For starters, I’m not wholly certain that that would mean very much to her. And it would make sense to tell her about it, because I know that she would love to see the bears that I’ve been working on, etc. (She’s way crafty!)
But I’ve not told her, for the simple reason that it seems too darn weird. Not that there’s anything there that would offend her (except maybe the not-so-occasional grammatical error, which would bug her far more than the somewhat occasional swearing…), and it’s not like I have ever referred to either her or my father, nor do I plan to. It’s just, like you say, too weird.
It’s not like I intended for this to be some secret world, but I realize that I am not sharing the blog address with my college alumni magazine or adding it as a postscript to my Christmas cards. But then, is that even weirder? To share thoughts, etc. with people you’ve never met, and probably will never meet - and not with people that you care about?
Discuss amongst yourselves, I’ve blathered far too long about this…..
debbie says:
July 8th, 2006 at 3:20 pm EDTVisit debbie
ooh, understandably weirded out! kinda makes me glad that i’m too computer illiterate to do all that ISP and stat checking stuff. :)
keep writing whatever you feel comfortable with! i’ll be reading!
ps: are you coming to town?? we’d love to see you and the pathetic one!
2fs says:
July 8th, 2006 at 3:48 pm EDTVisit 2fs
This is probably why I’ve never bothered to figure out how to check ISP logs and all that technical mumbo-jumbo. Whoever reads my blog reads it - either they’ll say something to me via comments or real life, or they’ll ignore it and snicker to themselves behind my back, going “my god what a blithering idiot he is…” Fortunately, I have no ex-wives to worry about - just an ex-gf with whom I was, at last contact, on perfectly fine terms. I don’t think my mom would bother reading my blog even if I mentioned it - not because she wouldn’t care but because (as has been noted) I create too many sentences. That is my defense: type fiendishly and people will become overwhelmed.
sweetney says:
July 10th, 2006 at 9:33 pm EDTVisit sweetney
umm, yeah, i see ISPs all the time that kind of creep me out, but force myself to put the blinders on for the sake of my sanity. were i to not do that, there’s no way i could continue.