There’s a fine line to walk when writing a blog about your own life. On the one hand, I want to add enough detail to make it interesting and engaging, but on the other I don’t really want the world figuring out which Sainsbury’s you visit or what your address in New York was. Add the fact that I teach teenagers who are still technically minors and it becomes a lawless wild west of the internet. Except what is the equivalent of riding on a stagecoach with a shotgun? I don’t think there is one.
I try to avoid names on my blog and give everyone (somewhat lame) internet aliases, or refer to them obliquely. I think this is my attempt to not advertise my entire life–after all, this is a blog, not a reality show. However, even oblique references have caused me some serious trouble. Back before my wedding I wrote a rather bitter blog about people who couldn’t come because I was hurt and disappointed. After all, getting married is a time when you think of having all the people you know and love gathered round you, and I didn’t have that. I did perhaps overreact–after all, people have legitimate reasons for not flying across an ocean for a party–but even at the time I was mindful of other people’s privacy and did not mention any names, or even any details about the persons I was mentioning. Even so, I got an angry facebook message from one of the friends in question, saying basically how dare I, that I should have addressed this with him first (a fair point), but really upset that I mentioned him so publicly for shaming. Except…I don’t really think that’s what I did. The back and forth got really tense and horrible, and I think I lost a friend over it. I got a perfunctory happy birthday wall post, but the Christmas card I sent got returned, and there was not even a ‘sorry I can’t be there’ message when I invited everyone out when I was back in NYC over Easter. Continue reading