One Foot Out of the Closet

No, not that closet.

Are you a closet blogger?

I've had a couple of things come up this week to make me think about this. First, my husband recently started a blog. While I completely support him in this, and I think it's a great blog, he asked me if he could list my blog on his blogroll. That would be all well and good, however, he has no problem with blogging under his full name. Or sharing his blog with people from our "real life". There are even pictures of us on his blog. So when he asked me, I told him that I preferred to remain relatively anonymous in the blogosphere, to which he had a good chuckle. Actually, I think the words I used were, "I prefer to keep an air of anonymity on my blog". Okay, so that's probably why he laughed.

The second thing that happened is that this week I was approached by an expat website to participate in a survey about expatriate women working in Asia. I am listed in their blog directory, so I was asked if I could answer a few questions about who I am, the company I work for, my role and my some other questions centered around my thoughts as an expat woman working in Malaysia. This was in conjunction with a magazine article that they are writing for a US magazine. While I was flattered to be asked, I doubt that anything I sent to them will be included in the magazine. I mean, who knows how many people they are asking? But as I responded to them, I had to stop and think before I did so. See, they asked me for my name. My full name. The name of the company I work for. My title and job role. Things that could, horror of horrors, force me out of the blog closet.

I'm not sure what my intentions were when I started this blog. Was it to remain completely anonymous? Or not? Or somewhere in between? I didn't think about these things, so I just started writing and figured it would work itself out. Initially, I was so excited that I had joined the 21st century and started a blog of my own that I told some people in my "real life" about it. Some family members know, but some don't. Some friends know, but most don't. Now that I'm too far into it to remain completely anonymous, my main goal at this point is just not to have people from work read my blog. This is tough sometimes because most of our friends are also people we work with. So I've had to be pretty careful about who I tell about my blog. The last thing I need is a bunch of work colleagues reading about my visit to the gynecologist. I've learned that work people are far too interested in some HR chick's personal life. Not because I'm all that interesting, but because they are always on a mission to - gasp! - make us human and thus, forward the post about my latest gastrointestinal issues. "Wow! She goes poo just like the rest of us!" (Actually, I don't, thanks to the family curse known as IBS, but let's save that for another post, okay?)

So, do I censor myself? Sure. Would I censor myself if I was completely anonymous? Probably. I'm far too paranoid not to. But, sure, my blog would be less censored if I was just writing to the great, big blogosphere rather than write knowing that people I know are reading my blog. That's why I'm sometimes envious of bloggers who, whether or not they are truly anonymous, are completely candid and "let it all hang out", so to speak. The bloggers that write about those things that we all secretly think, or do, or say, but are scared to write about them. How incredibly liberating just to put it all out there. It reminds those of us who are too paranoid, or too embarrassed, or too self conscious to do so that in the end, we are all just people, made up of good and bad, highs and lows, crowning moments of glory and times that we want to crawl in a hole from shame, that really, we're all just human, trying to do the best we can.

So what about you? Are you out of the blog closet? Do people from your "real life" know about and read your blog? If so, do you find yourself censoring your posts, or having to deal with any consequences if you don't?