Over the last week or so, as I've started to writing in much greater detail
about my life, I've felt both exhilarated and worried. I've kept a private personal
journal (off and on) since my early teens in which I have poured out my heart
and processed my doubts and deep heart questions. I continue to value that private
space -- and no one should think that my blog is exactly the same as my journal!
But the problem with my journal writing is that it was sometimes terribly lazy.
I'd write about the same thing over and over again; I make commitments that
I soon forget and to which no one could hold me accountable -- since no one
knew of my self-promises.

I've known for a while that there is really no substitute for writing for an
external audience. Hence, over a year ago, I started a mailing list that I was
planning to send to willing friends and family -- but not to the general public.
The plan was to write something interesting every day. I chose the mailing list
format to limit dissemination to select folks. I figure that I would get the
advantages of writing for others while protecting my privacy. Before I launched
the mailing list, I practiced to see how whether I could write something interesting
every day. I ran out of steam during my practice run, and the mailing list was
never launched.

Similar ambitions lie behind Hypotyposis,
this weblog. Note, however, the differences: the blog is public available but
I'm not sending ("pushing") the content out to my friends. I've told
some friends about my blog but have made it clear that I don't expect them to
read it. (Well, that comment is possibly disingenuous since if I had no expectations
that they would read it, why would I even bring it up?) I am primarily writing
this blog for myself, for me to "to work out (some of) [my] issues concerning
Bach, the Web, life with God, politics, philosophy, art, justice, love, friendship,
the church, books, etc." as the byline of the blog says. In contrast to
my mailing list, I've been jazzed by the writing of this blog -- it has been
exhilarating. I'm writing about matters of great significance to myself (if
not to others). But since I'm writing to be read by others, I'm writing with
the care and focus that are usually missing in my journaling.

Writing in the open has sparked serendipitous human connections, true gifts
of grace. Two recent examples: First, my listing of my
own life roles sparked Mark
Sentell's list of life roles -- and a new connection across the country.
In all the years since I first came across this concept, I never had opportunity
to share a key conceptual framework with others, even among any of wonderful,
close friends or family. (Isn't it odd that those closest to us should not know
things so dear to us?) The list I wrote wasn't a secret; I would have gladly
shared it with anyone who wanted to know. I suppose what was key is that the
sharing had to happen in the right context. I needed to be able to set that
context -- and there weren't too many opportunities to talk at this level with
friends.)

The second example is Scot
Hacker's pointing me to a relevant Salon
piece on transportation in response to my
post on biking. Scot was not a stranger to me since he and I both spoke
on a panel on RSS
on the Berkeley campus. I didn't know, however, that he was an avid bicyclist.
I had read the Salon piece to which Scot had referred but had chosen not to
link to it since it was not openly available to non-Salon subscribers. When
I made that point to Scot, as well as despair at ever being able effect positive
change in transportation reform, he made two points that impresed me: that we
should be pointing to Salon since it was worth reading and deserved subscribers
and that we should ride our bikes with relish and not despair. His email made
my day, changed my mind, and lifted my spirit.

Let me now turn from the exhilaration of self-revealing blogging to the misgivings
I've felt about my blogging. I've hinted about my concerns, most clearly with
my post "Honest,
open, and foolish?" but also in the context of posting my
life roles and outlining a rough
chronology of my life. My uneasiness has been the subject of two conversations
I had yesterday and today -- last night with my friend Peter, who is a regular
reader of my blog, and over lunch today with Chris.
Peter was very surpised with how self-disclosing I've been recently. I shared
with him my own doubts about what I've been doing but told him more about why
I'm doing what I'm doing. (I have yet to explain some of those ideas here.)
Chris asked me whether there was something specific that I'm worried about.
Though I'm concerned about a lot of potential bad things that can come from
blogging -- government data-mining/surveillance, cyber-stalking, rubbing some
anonymous nut the wrong way, discrimination by some future job employer, giving
plenty of information about myself to someone who wants to hurt me in some way
("knowledge is power") -- I've not been able to nail down any concrete
worries. And though I've started to be more revealing of who I am, what I have
disclosed is still rather tame and limited compared to a lot of other stuff
out there.

So what to do? I don't want to spend too much time on "meta-blogging",
blogging about blogging -- which is what I'm doing here right now. But I need
to deal with the issue of what to say and how much to say before I forge ahead.
I am looking for insight in this matter. It's probably a good time to look at
some of the blogging books for wisdom. Google has already revealed a couple
of interesting pointers [1,
2]. (Whenver I
look at other blogs for discussion along these lines, I sense that I'm going
through a common stage in blogging -- there must be a FAQ on this topic.)

While I sort out the question of what I am comfortable writing about, I'll
probably blog on topics about which I feel less vulnerable. There's lot that
I want to write about without putting myself out too far.