Going public

I've recently been having an internal intellectual struggle about blogging. I love it. That is clear through my THREE different blogs. I have this blog, a teaching blog, and a classroom blog. I love keeping connected to all of my distant people through blogging. It is fun and makes me feel like they haven't all moved off into different worlds and lives. Our blogs keep us connected. That's the whole point, right? Well, being a teacher, I am very cautious as to what I publish on my blog. In fact, about a year ago, I privatized my personal blog as to protect my private life and to create a stronger division between my private and my public life. (You can read more about this whole dilemma here.)

Well, for the past two days, I have been sorting through my personal blog, deleting any posts that don't necessarily show me in the most positive light. This doesn't mean that all of my many faults and mistakes and mishaps have been deleted. That would mean the entire blog would be gone! No. I've deleted any posts with excessive cursing (which I don't need to be doing anyway!) as well as posts that complain about work. I'm making my private and personal blog public once again, and I want to make sure that there is nothing questionable that could get me into "hot water." I also think that knowing my blog is public again will help me to be more thoughtful in the things that I choose to share with the world. I fully intend to share my failures and successes, my highlights and lowlights , but do I really need to openly complain about the people in my life? No.

Today in mass, the inspirational passage that comes at the start of the day's reading was about gossiping and talking about others. Any one who knows me knows that I struggle with this. Let me share with you a quotation: "A fellow once resolved that for three months, he would speak only of those who were present. Two results of the experiment: compassion for others went way up, while conversation went way down." Well, in many ways, my blog is a one-sided conversation so I don't need to worry about conversation drying up ... hopefully. I would like to think that I can find plenty of things to post about that don't involve gossiping about other people. Anyway, my point is that this blog shouldn't be about the many injustices that I feel a victim of (please read the sarcasm here!). It should be a chronicle of my life and times ... good and bad. I'm hoping that by refraining from posting complaints about others, the blog will become more introspective and thoughtful about how my actions affect the world. We'll see. Either way, this blog is now public! I hope you all continue to enjoy it.