A blogger I’ve been following for quite a while, Stephanie Faris, is holding a “group blog” thing. Each Thursday, everyone participating writes on the same topic and links up. Seems like a cool idea (i.e., it saves me the trouble of thinking up a topic), so why the heck not? This week’s topic:

S.O. Reading Your Blog

Does your significant other read your blog? How does ey[[daggerto]] feel about it? Does knowing ey’s reading influence what you write?

As I do not now have a significant other in my life right now, the short answer is: No. Next blog.

However. You know long-winded little me can’t just leave it at that. Why don’t I expand it a bit to: Do the people who matter in your life read your blog?

Uh…I don’t know.

Friends?

I must sheepishly say again, I don’t know. Other than a couple of curiosity drive-bys over the years, I’ve gotten no feedback at all from people that I know in real life as to whether or not they read my blogs. I suspect they don’t as it’s not likely they’d keep quiet about it.

Even so…I’m very aware that people that I know MIGHT read this stuff, if only because I have good Google placements on a lot of searches. The possibility does influence what I write, especially in the Journal section where I’m most likely to talk about the aforementioned people. I know that once it posts, it persists. So, I’m not going to say something from which I’m not willing to deal with any resultant fallout. And this is a general people-in-my-life sort of policy and not something that would be limited to a significant other. Too many people have forgotten how to edit themselves in recent years. Me…I still remember.

I write with the assumption that the universe’s sense of humor will guarantee that if I post something I don’t want someone to see, they’ll be certain to see it, and at the worst possible time.

That doesn’t mean that I totally muzzle myself. I have opinions, and I voice them. I get annoyed, and I vent. But I am mindful that this is a very public forum, and there are real people involved. Sure, there is some license for public and newsworthy people, and also for certain contexts, but I try to opt for not feeding the baser appetites of our nature. The key to avoiding regret is to think before acting.