My writing is very personal to me, therefore so is this blog. And that is something that poses a very strange dilemma for me. On a certain level, I’d like to have a lot of visitors and followers, but at the same time that is a very scary prospect. Do I really want to open myself up to all of these strangers?
I currently feel safe among my small, rather close-knit blogging community. I don’t have to worry about ridicule and rejection; I know that my blogging buddies will be kind even in disagreement. Can the same be said if my blog were to have much more traffic? I feel if it were, it wouldn’t be the same. I wouldn’t have the same freedoms, constantly be doubting my words and conscious that so many people were to read it. I don’t feel like I could wholly open myself up.
I can list on one hand the number of people in my every-day life that know of this blog: my best friend, my husband, and another close friend (this is all excluding online friends). That’s it. It is extremely difficult for me to share this personal part of me with my family. I truly love my family, but oh my goodness, I can only imagine the amount of teasing I would receive if my brothers or sister were to find my blog.
There is just something that makes me distinctly uncomfortable knowing that people who are close to me are reading my writing. I don’t have my blog linked to my Facebook or Pinterest, and only have it linked on Twitter because I (don’t use it very often and) purposefully do not follow a lot of people besides bloggers. I would like to create a board on my Pinterest for my blog to get it out there a little more, but I don’t necessarily want all of my Facebook friends to know about it. So, I thought, I’d just make a new account for my blog and post from there, but then that’s a bit of a hassle and inconvenience to have to jump between my personal account and my blog. And it’s silly to not want to promote your blog among your friends, right?
I keep coming back to the purpose of blog. It’s a creative outlet for me to share my stories and my life for others. I got the first part down, I just can’t seem to share this with the people in my life that aren’t online. It’s like I’m read to take that jump, to say “Hey! this is my blog! I am super proud of it!” but just can’t get past having to actually share it with people.
I don’t have anything to hide. I’m not ashamed of who I am. I don’t talk about people and I’m appropriate with my posts. In an ideal world, I would like to stop pretending that my blog doesn’t exist because it is something that I spend a lot of time on and am proud of, but it is so personal to me that I am scared of any teasing or judgement I receive. I want to share, but I want to keep it close to home. It’s the ultimate oxymoron that I’ve been struggling with for the last five years.
My mind is just a jumble of thoughts right now and this really isn’t the most put-together post. I’m just trying to wrap my head around everything and just make a decision.
Help?
With that being said, one of my favorite smells growing up was my dad brewing coffee in the morning. I may not like the taste of it, but it smells soo good.