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HANG IT ALL OUT THERE? YOU DON'T NEED TO

LAST week I wrote about   the "Things I Don't Want to Tell You" meme. What I left out was, of the two authors I mentioned, b...



LAST week I wrote about the "Things I Don't Want to Tell You" meme. What I left out was, of the two authors I mentioned, both admitted their blogs were on the peachy side of keen.

"I think it's human nature to want to shine the best light upon ourselves and I confess to being afraid of showing you the mundane and ordinary sides of life," Ez wrote.

Jaclyn's post said much the same. "You don't get to see the dusty corners, dirty dishes, days when I'm homesick and feeling sorry for myself…," she said.

It's not just Jaclyn and Ez though, there are others musing over their peachy-keen posts. 

A couple of week's ago Pip noticed high-profile bloggers and media personalities divorcing themselves from polite chit chat and freely baring all;  and, in my own neck of the woods, Emily aired her own "dirty" linen – so to speak. 

But, I'm a little contrary, so I’m going to go out on a limb and say: so what if you want to keep it peachy?

I liken blogging to an old-school family photo album – preferably the spiral-backed ones that fall apart several decades later. 

In those albums of old there are no photos of the almighty row that preceded the tent finally going up. Nor is there a photo essay of the travel-sick child who has vomited by the side of the road for the umpteenth time. There's no happy snap of a teen child holding up the fourth truancy letter home this year. Nope. They’re not there. Why would they be? They’re part of family lore and that’s enough. 

When I started blogging I did it for me. I needed a creative kick up the arse: a way to hold myself accountable. I needed to pick up a camera again, to write like someone was reading my words (quite different from my journal, written for me, or my professional work) and to occasionally draw, sew, make baskets and pull prints. The little band of readers was a bonus, a huge serendipitous no-backing-out-now bonus.

Blogging offered a richness to my creative pursuits that I could never have imagined and, to people who ask me whether they should dive in; I tell them wholeheartedly, yes.

But, hang it all out there? No, I don’t think you need to.

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