Dec 3, 2003 Writing
I’ve got unofficial rules for this blog but I break them now and then. They are as follows:
Don’t write about things about which I am emotionally confused and tender. I learned my lesson about this with my entries on adoptive breastfeeding. I often use my blog to sort out feelings and I’ve learned that it’s unreasonable for me to assume that people can see the process within a series of entries. Anything written down looks official enough that of course people assume that I mean what I write. Only I don’t always. I go back and forth on things. Check out my various entries on homeschooling when Noah was five. I state unequivocally that Noah will go to kindergarten than a week later I swear my allegiance to homeschooling. If it’s an issue that’s still difficult for me emotionally, I better not invite comments by sharing. That’s my responsibility and leads to my next unofficial rule.
Shuck the defensiveness. This can be tough. I don’t like it when people read into what I write more than necessary and I also don’t like it when people give me advice based on what they thought I said. But this is my problem. If people are kind enough to take time out of their day to say something, I would do well to listen to the intentions behind it.
Try not to violate the privacy of others. I could do better on this but I’m worlds ahead of where I was when I first started writing here.
Leave out my passive-aggressive manipulative entries, the ones where I bitch about someone in an undercover way or try to write a fracas up so that I look like the clearly injured party. Usually what I end up doing is giving in to scrawling the ugly entry down and then rewriting and rewriting, each time trying to get closer to using “I” statements and if I follow through to the end, I always find out something about myself that I was trying hard to miss.
Walk away from issues about which I have an opinion but which do not — directly or indirectly — have an impact on me. This includes the journeys of other bloggers. Politics, however, are fair game although I don’t usually indulge there because it doesn’t seem productive to me.
Possibly related posts
December 3rd, 2003 at 12:03 pm
It’s good to have rules; I admire that you’ve thought it through so carefully. I’m still feeling out the boundaries of my blog. I know I mean it about my children–a place to record the details of their behavior that would otherwise be lost, and also about pareting–what it means to be in the midst of that process. But the bounds of that are hard to locate. For example, I’ve many times written an entry–about why I don’t show my children Disney, for example, or some other back-handed critique of other parents’ styles, only to delete in shortly thereafter.
December 4th, 2003 at 9:49 pm
I wish I could trackback to this post. At the very least I will print the list, tape it to my front of my Mac and commit the points to memory. Should come in useful the next time I have a blogfire.