Almost everyone I know is aware of the fact that I blog. This doesn’t mean everyone READS my blogs, only the fact that they’re aware of them, or at least one of them. The local folk knows because my Times Union blog gets excerpted in the print “Best of the Blogs” section of the newspaper. It happened at least thrice in April.There is this situation that involves someone, not in my family, that is pretty dire; can’t tell you more than that. And when I had to blow off choir rehearsal one night because of said situation, someone said, “Well, I guess you can blog about it.” And the thing is: no, I can’t.
I think the problem is that because I’ll blog about EVERYTHING, topicwise, if it interests me, the thought is that I’ll blog about ANYTHING. And I guess I got a little irritable about that, I suppose.
But then again, it’s a great cover. If they think your life is an open book, they won’t snoop for secrets they are convinced don’t exist.
***
Incidentally, recently I accidentally invited a whole bunch of people in one of my electronic address books to join LinkedIn – sorry about that – and a few people took me up on it. I expected a couple of people to be irritated, but no; they were apologetic that they just don’t do that online thing, that they’re just not working anymore so they don’t need to, or that they have no idea what LinkedIn is.
Let me say this about anything you might get from me from LinkedIn or Facebook or whatever; if you choose not to participate, YOU ARE NOT HURTING MY FEELINGS. REALLY. I’m on Facebook and I ignore stuff, or delete it as unread, all of the time, just as I do with certain e-mail. Especially Farmville-type stuff, which I have actually figured out how to block. Nothing personal, I’m just not interested. Whatever I send to you, intentionally, or possibly by accident, please ignore if it doesn’t suit you.
Picture from Flickr
I think people who don’t blog, don’t understand the mindset. Just because we “can” doesn’t mean we “will.” In this age of transparency, I still believe being a complete open book may not be the best idea. BTW, you’ll be getting a LinkedIn invite from me shortly.
Hi Roger,
We’re definitely on the same page, as the saying goes, about blogging and blogging topic assumptions made by others. My heart goes out to you about the dire family situation. My thoughts are with you and I admire and agree about not being “an open book” on such matters. (I also think your play on words in your comic caption from Hamlet is apt and it made me smile.)
Congrats for being in the newspaper about your blog three times in April. That’s cool!
As for FB or Linked in, please send me both links again as I would like to support that. Please use this email address in this comment to send me that, since you may have me on a different list with a different email I no longer use. I’ve been on a blogging hiatus for a few months. You know me as “gel”, but I’m now using my real name for blogging about life or about my art.
In fact, Roger, I’d most appreciate if you’d go to my FB fan page, and “Like” me there because I’m trying to build a fan base to get my own url for my art business and am reaching out to social media to promote. (Like doesn’t mean you need to like my work…you can just “like” me. 🙂 I need bloggers help so I can have the minimum of 25 fans required by FB since I don’t have but 3 family members left, so that I can have my own url instead of FB’s one that is comprised of a bunch of numbers and other hard to remember extraneous stuff.
That FB url is: a href=”http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=204162709628908&id=203812199663959#!/pages/Lynne-Eve-Grossman-ColourYourWorld-Art-Studio/203812199663959?sk=wall”>Please click here to like me on my fan page of Art studio on facebook
Thanks so much, Roger. Also, if you receive an email about this, too, please pardon repetition. My main computer became hosed just after I began to network via social media.
Please do email me your linnk on FB, because obviously Finding Roger Green is hard to find the right one easily, even with your famous Jeopardy winnings!
-Artistically,
Lynne Grossman aka Gel
Yep, I agree, too: Not everything should go in a blog post. I’d been blogging for around eight months before I mentioned my partner by name. Even now, after nearly five years blogging, I never refer to any other family member by name (apart from the furbabies, of course), nor do I write about any specifics of their lives. I don’t think I have any right to do that, unless they give me specific permission, and I don’t think I’ve ever asked for it.
I guess blogging does have ethics, after all!