When I started writing this blog, I was relentlessly, scrupulously honest. More than that, exhibitionistic, in a devoted, committed way. I was more than rigorously honest. Basically, if there was a thought in my head, I put it on the blog.
Over time, that shifted. Both because I started to care about the feelings of some of the people about whom I wrote, or about whom I didn’t write but who read the blog, and because I (narcissistically) started to care about what readers of the blog might think of me.
Both of those concerns have led to omissions and distortions over the years. Not in a huge way. Honestly, there’s nothing material either that I have not written about, or that I’ve written about in ways that are not faithful to my thoughts and feelings, ultimately. But, there are some things I’ve left out, some things I’ve shaded, one way or another, that I might not have done in the early years of the blog.
And this sometimes makes me sad. Not because I feel you deserve more or better, but because it feels like a way in which I deprive myself.
Writing is one of my chief strategies for thinking, as well as for managing my relationship to my feelings. If I don’t write about something, it’s harder for me to think about it. If I don’t write about a feeling, it’s harder for me to move through it, for it to move through me.
