I just finished Toni Blake's "Letters to a Secret Lover", and the main character, Lindsey, got me thinking about something (this seems to happen a lot). Lindsey writes a popular advice column for lovers, and her blog gets a lot of traffic. Her personal life is fairly public, and that is of her own choice as she posts information and revealing tidbits about fashion and her upcoming wedding. Things get ugly when a revealing picture is taken of her and her fiance' in the middle of a fight and ends up on the internet. This signals the end of her engagement. She decides she's not qualified to give love advice, and takes an indefinite break from her blog.
Other stuff happens later in the book that has her feeling confident enough to go back to her column, and to revealing a lot about what's currently going on in her personal life. She also reveals a lot of personal information about the man she's involved with, things that eventually come back to haunt them both.
My question today is this: how much is too much? I guess because I blog, this topic really hit home for me. I don't reveal a lot of stuff about my personal life (ahem, I tend to talk more about my friends' dramas than my own but I do try to keep names out of it) because I'm just not that kind of person. But there are bloggers out there with spouses/boyfriends/partners that share parts of their personal lives that make me wonder how the other person feels about that stuff out there floating in cyberspace.
I know that some of the bloggers that do that have spouses, etc. who know about the blogging and occasionally add their own input to posts. That's cool. I don't have a problem with that. I just wonder about the ones that reveal a lot of ultra personal information about their sex lives or their families or where they live and/or work. Think about it: you really don't know who might be reading your blog. In LTASL, it turns out that Lindsey had at least one fan that was a little too caught up in her life. In her case, it turned out to be a dangerous situation. And while some of us (okay, just me *g*) aren't anywhere near that popular, I still post pictures occasionally of what I look like, or what some of my online friends look like.
It's a strange thing, the intimacy of the internet. It lulls you into this sense of security that makes you feel safe and surrounded by friends. You share. You reach out to people. You have fun and learn things and sometimes if you're really lucky, you get to meet those online friends in person that you have a connection with. It can be a really special thing.
Do you think you share too much?
Where do you draw the line?
Ever post anything you later regretted?
posted by Stacy~ at 7/18/2008 05:08:00 AM
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