Yesterday one of my favorite blogs was locked because someone in her family found out about it. This morning I read an article on how personal blogs by two editors and a columnist at New Times in Miami, which included observations about current and former staffers, caused major uproar at the company. Lawsuits could be forthcoming.
That's the thing with blogs, you never know who's going to find them. No matter how much you try to hide your real identity (and the blog that was locked yesterday did an excellent job of doing just that), someone you know can find it.
Marathon Girl found my (old) blog soon after we started dating. (Five minutes on Google and she can do wonders.) She kept the knowledge to herself for a few weeks before finally telling me she had found it. I remember being a little stunned that she had found it after thinking about it, I realized there was little to worry about since my posts at the time were not about her or anyone else -- only what I was going through as a widower at the time.
After Marathon Girl's discovery, I realized that what I wrote could be read by anyone, anywhere, anytime. And though it didn't stop me from blogging, it made me a little more cautious what I wrote about. Though no one else knew about my blog, many potential blog entries stayed in my paper journal instead of working their way online. There were some very personal things not worth sharing with the world -- even anonymously.
Two months ago when I made the decision to blog under my real name, I worried that it would limit what I could write about -- especially since friends and family and coworkers who didn't know I was blogging would now have full access to it. But I've discovered that, for the most part, what I post here is no different than what I'd post in my old blog.
Since I've started this blog, occasional situations have arisen at work or with family and friends that made me wish my blog where anonymous so I could write about those incidents.
And I do end up writing about them. But they end up in my paper journal, not online.
That is probably for the best.
It's one of the few places Google can't access.