In which I wonder about content ownership and self expression as they pertain to the act of blogging.
One time I wrote something on my site about a friend of mine, and woke up freaked out realizing that if she read the post it might hurt her feelings. I got up and deleted the passage in the middle of the night, sick with worry that she’d already read it.
I didn’t take a job once, for several reasons but primarily because the non-compete wouldn’t have allowed me to blog about it. I was threatened with a law suit after I posted about a bad experience at a hospital. A friend once told me off for posting about the death of a mutual friend’s dog, saying it wasn’t my story to tell. An employer had me remove a post because I’d said I thought the company was broke when they laid off some staff. And just last week, a member of the Band That Never Gigs read what I had to say about a recent practice and got pissed at me.
Now with a track record like that, it must seem that I write whatever I damn well feel like. But I don’t! You have no idea how much stuff I don’t write about! (My God, I should get a gold star for reticence, for real.) The truth is that I carefully consider every single scrap of content, comparing it to a veritable array of mental indices I’ve developed to help me determine if a story is actually mine to tell or not before publishing it on the web:
- If the topic is common knowledge, I can write about it.
- If the event took place in public, it’s common knowledge.
- If I’m telling only my experience or my reaction to something, and obfuscating all identifying details, I can write about it.
- If it doesn’t endanger anyone’s feelings, livelihood, or reputation, I can write about it.
- If I’ve been given permission to write about it, I can write about it.
- If it’s totally about me, I can write about it.
I never write about secrets. I have deliberately not written – several times – about what a burden it is when someone tells me a secret, even though I could write about the burden itself without revealing any details of the secret. (If I were to write that post, it might go something like this: “I hate secrets. Right now I’m worrying over two, and I didn’t ask to hear either of them. One requires me to not offer love and help to someone who’s needing it, because I don’t officially know it’s needed. The other involves two people directly and their spouses indirectly, all of whom are my friends, and requires me watch my tongue so that I don’t reveal what I know – what I never wanted to know in the first place – accidentally in front of the wrong person. Why do people do this shit to me?!”)
Yeah, secrets suck. Moving on.
I try very hard to make sure I actually own the topics I write about, but sometimes it gets really complicated. Take the hypothetical breakup of two of my friends: let’s say the breakup is common knowledge, but what each of my friends have told me about it is, of course, private. My thoughts about and reactions to the breakup are mine, but if I can’t frame my thoughts without revealing private details I’d have to give that one a pass as far as writing about it goes. Like secrets, private pain (no matter how deeply it moves me or makes me think or gives me perspective on my own journey) is not mine to share. So I’m effectively denied writing about part of my own experience, which irks me, but eh, it’s all for the best.
When I was writing about The Ex back when we were married, I felt that my marriage was totally mine to write about. I have no secrets myself (I wrote about my panic disorder and miscarriages in great, raw detail, and I’ll tell you any embarrassing or private or shameful thing you’d ever want to know about me), so I may not be qualified to decide, but I hardly think the fact that the man wouldn’t use a laundry basket was private. Some people wondered that I’d just say whatever I wanted to on the Internet about my husband, and they thought I was effectively talking shit behind his back. My position was that I never said anything on the web I didn’t say to his face, and since it was a public forum he was welcome to read it if he wanted to.
So to recap: I will keep things off the site if they’re secret, or private, or might hurt your feelings, or because you asked me to, or because I haven’t yet said it to your face, or because you threatened to sue me, or because it’s totally illegal (like cocaine or something), but everything else is mine, damn it.
What I’m trying to say is that I really do try to be discreet as I write about what affects me, but the point is that this is my story. I use nicknames for nearly everyone and will always remove anything someone asks me to – I’m not trying to out people, I’m trying to tell my story – but sometimes my story comes from yours. And if you know me, you know that you’ll eventually end up on goblinbox.
Which brings us, finally, to yesterday’s post. I wrote about public knowledge that affected me directly – I mean, my gawd, my household was all atwitter over the fight between my roommate Truck and his boss, The Ex. It happened right in front of my face, and involved parties who talked to me about it, too, so I figured the story was both harmless and mine to tell.
Ooops.
In other words, the guy that The Ex and Truck are currently contracting for? Yeah, you guessed it, he reads this site! So it turns out I narked The Ex off to his employer, because the boys didn’t go to work on Tuesday!
It’s very, very bad blog form, I have to admit. I mean, does anyone ever want to find out their boss knows they weren’t at work due to brown bottle flu? I think not!
I probably deserve to be spanked or something – it’s a good thing we’re divorcing. Now I have to hide for a few days whenever there’s a chance The Ex is here dropping Truck off after work! LOL!
