Restart the engine

by Eve, in Books and Writing (No Comments)

People managed to run fulfilled and productive lives before the invention of the keyboard, so it had to be possible I could happily exist without a blog.

Apparently, it’s not.

I’d only been several months without a blog when the need to write again culminated in an insatiable itching under my fingernails. My previous blog had been a personal diary-type setup, with all the risk that went along with it—although, when publishing one’s personal life on a global stage, an acquaintance learning of an opinion you’d rather they’d not known you held, is not so much risk as it is inevitability.

Only in the blogosphere do strangers feel safer than friends. Strangers don’t get offended, nor is the typical blogger worried about losing their good opinion.

Fortunately, my last blogging experience didn’t end with the typical tale of catastrophe following the airing of dirty laundry. The event had been rather innocuous, but it never-the-less highlighted the danger of splashing one’s personal opinions about personal matters around with careless abandon.

This left me with several options:

1. Don’t blog.
2. Blog, but don’t let any personal acquaintances know about it.
3. Change the style of the blog to be fingernail-free.

I tried option one for several months, and the ensuing peace was soon accompanied by the irritation of itchy fingertips, showing option one to be only a short-term solution.

I never gave option two much credit, as with the invention of Google, there are no such things as shadows or nooks on the Internet—no secret is forever.

That left option three.

So I make this blog post with my fingernails filed, and a piqued curiosity to see how this will go.