ALL MY THOUGHTS LAID BARE FOR ALL THE WORLD TO SEE

A blog, if the blogger is being honest, is an unadulterated window into the blogger’s thoughts: her personal opinions, her political views, her pet peeves. I think that’s why many bloggers blog: their blog becomes a canvas to put it all out there.

The thing that I’m realizing, as a blogger, is that there are people on the other side of that canvas, looking at what I’ve put down and by doing so gaining insight into how I think and dream and despair. Not that I mind it; on the contrary, I blog not just to get things off my chest but to put them on others’, to dialogue and to vent and to provoke (and, every once in awhile, to educate and to inspire).

I guess I don’t consider my views any different from anyone else’s – not the views themselves, obviously, but the fact that I have them. Everyone has an opinion on the war on terror, on gay marriages, even on the Phillies. What’s different is that I post them on the Internet, while others keep them to themselves or air them privately among friends and colleagues.

So while everyone had an opinion on the invasion of Iraq in 2003, mine is hanging in cyberspace for all the world to see. While even the most casual of sports fans had an opinion at the beginning of the football season about who’s going to win the Super Bowl, my predictions are posted online for everyone to laugh at. (Hey, Cincinnati still can make the playoffs, right?)

Usually, you have face-to-face conversations with people you see in real life, and online conversations with people you will never meet. But I’m kind of liking that these two ways of corresponding are blurring together for me. One of my best friends from high school knows a lot about me from following my blog, and I do the same with his. And my wife’s boss, my doctor, and organization’s board chair are among people who have visited my blog at least once.

The thing that’s scary and neat about blogging is that when you say something in real life, and it turns out to be wrong, most people forget that you’ve said it; but when you blog it, it’s recorded for posterity. But I think that’s why I’ve recorded my opinions at the time, is to look back and see where I was wise and where I was foolish. And like John Kerry, I reserve the right to be for something before I was against it.