I'm not a writer, I just blog a lot.

I've got some magnificent milestones coming up. tomorrow will mark my 6 months of glorious brooklyn life, october is my seven year anniversary of being in remission from ye olde 'Cer, and this month connotes eight years of being an "online diarist". I've literally been blogging since before blogging was blogging. nearly a decade (I'm rounding, here,) of leaving a trail of brain breadcrumbs, sharing fanciful musings, candid confessions and a surplus stockpile of weird cat photos with the world wide internet. in all this time I don't think I've ever blogged about blogging, and it's a topic worthy of a bit of dissection. my "blogs" (in their many incarnations) have been reliably rewarding and inspiring, and I've met some incredible people and experienced events that I may never have otherwise that deftly usurp the stranger-than-fiction cake, but it's also gotten me into some hot water over the years. blogging, my bitch goddess, as she giveth and taketh. am I crazy for putting so much of myself out there? or are people crazy for reading it?

as I've taken up blogging again on the regular recently, I've found myself faced with a question: how personal is too personal? at the onset of junior college, I had a site that was relatively popular with a regular and loyal 'readership', and it was mostly based upon my adventures in chemotherapy, the shit show of ptsd that followed, and my life readjusting to normalcy (relative term) and doing all of that gut wrenching, teenager pupa to young adult caterpillar metamorphosis just a few leaps behind all of my peers. I've never been one to censor myself, and at the time I wrote about people in my day to day life often, sharing our interactions form the mundane coffee shop sitting with cheap acoustic guitars, to the twisted webs of love and romance in our little population 4k town. I was never cruel, and any catty undertones were likely sarcasm, but I found out just how powerful a little misinterpretation could be when I told one of my close girlfriends about my diary where my pen name was "blondefox". [disclaimer: before you ridicule, please take a moment and recall what your screen name was when you were 15. it was probably sublime lyrics. or something including the words "babe", "vixen", "gurl" and/or the number "69".]


the artist formerly known as "blondefox", working the register at tower records

this supposed friend, one of many in a clique of sonoma kids, decided that she didn't like the idea of me writing about our lives, and perhaps, just didn't like me, and she sent out a massive email forward on aol to everyone in our school, and then for good measure, some of my coworkers. despite that more than half of names were changed to protect the innocent and guilty alike, it was fairly obvious to distinguish that there weren't more than one of jake's russian girlfriend's running around town and that my vegan coworker with a flatulence problem wasn't actually named "alexis". some people reacted angrily and felt like their privacy had been violated, and others wrote me and said they enjoyed the documentation of our little army of small town bon vivants. unfortunately, there were several more in the former category, and the blondefox chronicles ended up squashing a promising budding relationship like a cupcake under an army tank due to inability to dispel the spurious nasty rumors that were ruthlessly spread by the parties who would have rather I'd taken the Anais route and waited until we were all dead for me to publish what went on behind closed bathroom doors at co-op parties. I was shunned by people that I had hung out with every day for years, and the vegan girl at work was dropping bombs behind the counter double time. I'd already decided it was worth it to have came, saw, and blogged in the end, and it was part of the reason I decided to move to san francisco instead of berkeley with my sonoman friends, but it ultimately killed my site.

that year, I went back to paper journaling, which I've found to be more cathartic in certain ways, but at this juncture in my life I only really write non-fiction and I feel like blogging has been a great outlet for sharing my stories and also keeping in touch with my west coast friends. I've even been telling some folks in my new york life about a place to find some of my writings online, and I had something happen to me that has never happened before. a charming young man with a fantastic hat, let's call him Uzi VonBorfewitzovich, wandered into my restaurant after a softball game and sat at the bar chatting with aaron and I for a spell, and we somehow got to shooting the shit about being a nerd and embracing one's geekitude. I figured, hell, what better time to tell him (someone with sketch comedy and nerd experience) about my blog, to get some feedback and exchange some ideas. the next time I heard from him, he said if we were going to hang out, I'd have to sign a non-disclosure agreement or something. I laughed, thinking he was making a funny, and then he said, "no, I really don't want to be in your blog. seriously."

now, uzi, if you're reading this, I'm sorry. but I feel I need the point of reference, and I was really taken aback that someone would balk at getting to know me better because of being concerned that bits and pieces of our exchanges would end up on this silly little blog thing that hardly anyone reads, as it is. it's not like I'm trading stock tips, here. I haven't exposed any torrid affairs since I last had one. but it makes me wonder... should I shut my blog trap? should I just blog about other things to keep all of my personal affairs personally mine? I don't watch any reality TV, so I couldn't do celebrity gossip. I don't like sports unless I am close enough to the field to see the baseball butts (and there'd better be garlic fries involved). I am good at weaving a word tapestry of adventures; they just so happen to be mine. maybe they belong to you, too? but where did all of that ownership really get defined, anyway?

something to ponder. thanks uzi. this'll be your last appearance in blogalogadingdong.