When you write a blog you're bound to upset people

It was going to happen at some stage and I'm surprised that it took this long for someone to complain about what I wrote. 

Now that someone has, I am feeling something milder than upset and less intense than defensive. It's a very "weak cordial" strength version of the two.

Privacy and the protection of personal information is a key consideration when engaging in any form of social media. This is something that has been in the forefront of my mind since I started this blog, so I was offended when the complainant suggested that I do some thinking about it. I would hope that if anything comes across in this blog, it isn't that I'm setting out to expose the people around me or that I'm a person who doesn't do very much thinking.

Whilst I'm feeling whatever this weak cordial feeling is, I'm trying to respond maturely and it has been an opportunity to reevaluate how I write about the people in my life.

I enjoy writing and I thought blogging would be a potentially positive reflective exercise. When writing about yourself, the people around you inevitably become a part of the dialogue. I have tried my best to approach how I write about my family with sensitivity. There are chunks of my family life that I am desperate to write about, but given that I write under my own name  (not a pseudonym, which many do) I can't write about the incidences I can't claim first hand ownership of, no matter how profound an impact they've had on me. This frustrates me but I respect and love my family.

I have found blogging to be a fantastic way to reacquaint myself with honesty. I do not find myself to be a dishonest person but blogging has been a way to put the ideology of honesty into practice. 

It is often said that people use the internet to create a false sense of anonymity and it gives them a false confidence to communicate things that they would never say in "real life". I have tried my darnedest to make my blog the opposite and I feel on the whole it has. Since writing my blog I have reconnected with people I hadn't spoken to in years because they related to something I wrote and wanted to talk about it. It has also made for much more candid discussion with the people I already know.

By writing about my own moments of insecurity, unsureness, conflict and angst I hope to have created an accurate picture of the flawed human being that I am. I think us humans spend a lot of time trying to convince the world that we're more normal, competent, smart, sane, accomplished and strong than we really are. I guess it has been my little way of saying, "No one is perfect, so let's stop pretending and just help each other out."

That being said, I have to have greater consideration of the fact that whilst I am gaining a great deal from putting my warts out there, I don't have the right to put my family's dirty laundry out on show without their permission. I didn't think I was exposing anything too grubby and I'm very sorry to the family member whom I made feel uncomfortable. I will reassess those boundaries and ensure I respect them better in the future. I will be more careful about how I identify people when I write about them and ask people more explicitly for permission before I identify them in posts.

In turn, I hope my family keep in mind, too, that I write about them because I see them as a pivotal part of my life.

Subsequently, I have removed the offending post. Please let me know if you have ever been identified in a post and it made you feel uncomfortable.

I will have to redirect the focus of this blog somehow and there are a few big issues I've had on the back burner that I ought to bring to the forefront soon. Some of you may remember that I went on a mysterious trip in January (Katie guest blogged whilst I was away) and I'm edging closer to being comfortable enough to write about that. 

If anyone out there would be interested in my point of view on something please let me know and will write about it.