Private.
Written on February 19, 2008
Crap, this privacy plugin does not seem to work properly. I guess I’ll post this entry while I figure out how to make it work like it should. While I work on this, please read the following paragraph . This will, I presume, serve the same function as a public service announcement, even if, in this case, and ironically, the public will serve to symbolically represent the uneasiness I sense, privately.
So, back from Belize and willing to try a little experiment to take my blog private. While away, it has dawned on me that I was self-censoring this blog because it has become somewhat popular and read by a few thousand people every month. It would seem that some form of editorial success might be the desired and a natural end result of blog keeping, but in this case, it is not.
I started writing because I felt that without an audience I may not have had the discipline to keep it up without broadcasting to someone, or anyone in particular. I might have felt that I could have lost interest in my own inner monologues. As it turns out, this is a moot point, and an audience has never been something I have actively and willingly longed for, at least not in the last dozen years(it also seems to coincide with the birth of my first son, Raphaël, twelve years and change ago). Everything I do now, outside of a few people, my children, friends and family has always been done in the hope of furthering, developing and experimenting with those innate skills I sense I have been lucky enough to have been graced with(or so I think!).
I do not seek an audience of thousands or feel the need to be recognized, use this blog to promote my work, myself or profit from its successes. I simply enjoy writing and putting my daily thoughts to paper, or rather, this keyboard. Strangely enough, the very fact that I have become somewhat successful at this, irks and unsettles me; however so slightly, as I sense a creeping self and public censorship, a need to please others, and not myself.
Nevertheless, I did not want to completely remove myself from those who have enjoyed reading these daily missives and might make the effort to continue. As such, and in order to write more freely and broadly, I will ultimately password protect the site and request users to register; at least when I figure it out. Managing a blog and the plugins which come with it can be confusing at times but always time consuming as well as a bit of a crap shoot.
Anyway, who knows, may be I won’t like it and go back to public blogging, we shall see, but it’s worth a shot. So may be, if it’s worth publishing, it’s worth protecting; privately !!!
O: This is kind of an interesting idea. Personally, I like to think of this blogging thing as messages in bottles tossed into the surf from this very luxurious but hard to find island that I have no intention of leaving. Or maybe like messages from outer space, you know, broadcast from some drifting ship that may or may not still be inhabited, and by whom, or, more likely, by what, who knows? Two things you could do to sustain this illusion would be not to accept comments, and never to look at your numbers. But I guess going private might achieve the same thing. Anyway, good luck. G.
George, those are all good points and I do agree that in going private that the “OG” spirit of the Blog might be lessened. Joerg for example pointed out that RSS should work which is something i had not thought about. If I can’t get that to work, I probably won’t go thru with it. I want an audience, I just want it to be more intimate but since most people use RSS readers this might finish me off all together. Anyway, I’ll write more and thing this thru more carefully, later today.