When I started blogging in September 2006, I figured that it didn't make sense to write anonymously. What was the point of putting effort into something, trying not to be self-indulgent and to stay entertaining, if people wouldn't be able to put a name to the words, a face to the name?
I began to look around self-consciously at airports-maybe someone would come up to me breathlessly, throw their arms around me and tell me they thought I was fabulous. Maybe some wide-eyed novice would sit sweatily next to me asking for advice. Maybe, people would know me.
It never happened.
But as the blog grew and I got more and more graphic, the people I wrote about began to wonder if they would be stopped by strangers asking, "Hey, are you the bloke who's daughter showed her tit to the taxi driver?"
"Are you the guy who's wife says boob every three words?"
It would only be a matter of time before my son would be asked "Aren't you the guy who's poop is named after all the Indian politicians?" Was that your mom I saw the other day brandishing her boob at a dirty old man while she tried to feed you with her umbrella?"
The more graphic and irreverent I get with age, empowerment and not giving a damn what anyone thinks of me, the more I hurt the people I write about.
And I don't know how not to write about the realities of my life. Not because I'm different, but because that's the way I've always seen what happened to me and around me.
So it's kinder to the people who loved me, been there for me and paid for my cigarettes to shoot my mouth off but keep it off the great www where anyone can google pork-eating funny man and come up with my father's name.
I've often thought of blogging anonymously but starting all over again seems too hard to do and I wouldn't want to publish my writing and not put my name to it. But off course I love blogging and maybe someday I will. In the meantime, it's still such a wondrous thing that there are such large hearts, such kind souls in a space that I was told was only full of people tried to get laid by ten year old girls. It's so beautiful that such talented writers share their skilled words and their special lives with strangers for free. It is indeed, a wonderful world and like some fairy-tales, some virtual spheres can also come true.
I am humbled.
Thank you.
I began to look around self-consciously at airports-maybe someone would come up to me breathlessly, throw their arms around me and tell me they thought I was fabulous. Maybe some wide-eyed novice would sit sweatily next to me asking for advice. Maybe, people would know me.
It never happened.
But as the blog grew and I got more and more graphic, the people I wrote about began to wonder if they would be stopped by strangers asking, "Hey, are you the bloke who's daughter showed her tit to the taxi driver?"
"Are you the guy who's wife says boob every three words?"
It would only be a matter of time before my son would be asked "Aren't you the guy who's poop is named after all the Indian politicians?" Was that your mom I saw the other day brandishing her boob at a dirty old man while she tried to feed you with her umbrella?"
The more graphic and irreverent I get with age, empowerment and not giving a damn what anyone thinks of me, the more I hurt the people I write about.
And I don't know how not to write about the realities of my life. Not because I'm different, but because that's the way I've always seen what happened to me and around me.
So it's kinder to the people who loved me, been there for me and paid for my cigarettes to shoot my mouth off but keep it off the great www where anyone can google pork-eating funny man and come up with my father's name.
I've often thought of blogging anonymously but starting all over again seems too hard to do and I wouldn't want to publish my writing and not put my name to it. But off course I love blogging and maybe someday I will. In the meantime, it's still such a wondrous thing that there are such large hearts, such kind souls in a space that I was told was only full of people tried to get laid by ten year old girls. It's so beautiful that such talented writers share their skilled words and their special lives with strangers for free. It is indeed, a wonderful world and like some fairy-tales, some virtual spheres can also come true.
I am humbled.
Thank you.
