Public or Private?

I told my parents about this site today. My mom immediately wanted to start reading. First, she loved that I had a picture of my glasses held together with a safety pin. Turns out she'd had to do the same thing last month. And the toilet paper runs? Oh, she remembers those as vividly as anyone.

My dad was pretty skeptical. "So, you're putting your personal details on the internet. For everyone. This can come back to haunt you."

I got defensive. "Daaad (Yes, I really said it like an exasperated teenager.), I'm never going to run for public office. I could never be president - I wasn't born here. I'm never going to try to be the CEO of anything. I tell people all this stuff anyway. Who in the world can hold this over me?"

"Well, you're just writing about yourself, right? Just you?"

"I"m writing about my life. Which has other people in it. If I wrote a book, it'd be all about this life I've been living."

"But you'd write it as fiction, right? Make up a name for yourself?"

"Well, even so, I'd tell everyone it was me. That is, everyone I haven't told already."

I came back into the city and met up with a couple friends, one of whom blogs, but not about personal stuff. The other would rather spoon her eyes out with a rusty trowel than put anything personal into a public arena. Relaying the conversation with my dad to them didn't help me make any kind of decision.

So I came home wondering if this is a bad idea. And opened my email to find a message from my dad, saying that he'd read my stories and the site wasn't at all what he was expecting. He thought it was funny. He loved it.

This made my day. Absolutely made my day.