We all have boundaries when it comes to blogging, and they fall in different places… and that is fine.
For me, broadly I don’t blog things that will mess up my real life relationships and I don’t blog things about work that I feel would be unprofessional…
So, I end up not blogging things that are really important to me, like:
- the reason my marriage broke down
- the issues my kids are dealing with
- job interviews that come up
- relationships in the parishes
In general, I try not to allude to stuff either, mostly because I find it very annoying when others do it – I’m like, ‘Oh for goodness sake – either bloody tell us or don’t’ when I read secret squirrel posts.
My boundaries do leave a lot of life to be shared and I love sharing life with other people in the blogosphere.
But I get blogger's block when something is consuming me that can’t be shared. I find it really difficult to read blogs, tweet, comment, write my own blog… I feel like I am withholding and need to withdraw to keep my secret safe.
I sense that I am a bit odd in this respect. I’m not particularly good at keeping my own secrets…. For instance, when I was eighteen and planning my boyfriend’s 21st birthday, he ended up thinking that I was having an affair because I was clearly emotionally withholding!
For me, relationships are based on trust, intimacy and mutuality, whether in the blogosphere or real life, and I feel that as soon as I can’t be intimate the relationship doesn’t work, and consequently the blog doesn’t work.
Anyway, that is a long way of saying that I’ve been elsewhere lately, and now I’m back… and if I have been odd then that is why! (Hope this hasn’t been a secret squirrel post!)
I would be interested in whether other people struggle like this too…?