I am baffled in today’s day and age when we hear about articles of an employee losing a job or a student losing a scholarship because of something dumb they put on the internet. Hello?! It’s 2011. The internet is nothing new, and the current generation of college kids has beentyping as long as they could write their name. I am 100% certain that my kids will be typing before learning cursive (is it even taught in school anymore?). However - I digress.
The focus of this post? People – what you put on Facebook? That’s your own little, completely non-private (I don’t care how many privacy boxes you checked or unchecked), corner of the World Wide Web. Think of it as a bulletin board that the world could potentially see. And a blog? Well, that too my friends, is not private. Even if I were to make this blog “private” – I am certain that it would not take a hacker more than a moment or two to figure out how to pop in and take a look at all the interesting ramblings I have to say.
Which leads me to my point. And I don’t think I have an answer, it’s more of a question I muse to myself from time to time. How personal do I make this blog? What are my own “privacy” filters? I haven’t taken the step of only allowing “followers” to read, and I’d really like to avoid doing that. As a blog-lurker myself, I appreciate finding people who allow me to view into their world, however filtered the online version is. As a mom, reading blogs is a very good way to learn about more than I ever wanted to know about more mom-related topics than I ever thought possible. And some of the things I stumble upon actually are of interest or useful to me. I post pictures of myself, my husband and my baby. I use our real names and you certainly don’t have to look very hard to find our last name. I do stay away from any even remotely taking the appearance of negativelydiscussing my place of employment or coworkers – so I suppose I do have one clear area of my life where I draw the line, online.
But lately I’ve wanted to share more on some topics. And find myself wondering if I should share less of others. (If for no reason otherthan the fact that reading about the minutia of Life With A Baby is really onlyinteresting to grandparents. Of which Ellie has 10 of….). I read interesting articles and think I should post the link on facebook. I have thoughts on controversial topics and wonder if I should share. 99.9% of the time, I steer clear of either of these activities because I don’t want to get too personal and I don’t want to offend, but then I wonder – if I care about a topic, and I have an opinion, what if sharing my opinion could change the world, even if only a little bit? Or if I find something interesting, wouldn’t someone else find it interesting as well? What’s a well-connected (only in the online sense of connected) girl to do?
Because my life? Isn’t all about changing diapers or cleaning my house or making dinner or going to the cabin or whatever I tend to blog about here. I have issues I care deeply about, and topics I find myself unable to let go of. Do I let go and take the plunge and go deeper? Or do I take a step back, cover the beautiful face of my darlin girl, and start focusing on privacy protection?
(For the record, I have like seven readers, so it’s not likely the content discussed above even matters very much. :) All this was sparked because I just that I came across an interesting article that I wanted to stand up and shout SO TRUE upon reading. And the article? Was about pumping while at work. And I read it while I was pumping – how ironic is that? And I thought about how feeding my baby (and my whole familyfor that matter) – nursing, pumping, even what I will feed her beyond mama’s milk – is something that I DO care deeply about. And I thought about posting the article on facebook. And then I chickened out. So I didn’t. For the record, the link is HERE. And yes, pumping is a very inadequate substitutefor the real thing, and YES, it makes me feel like a dairy cow. But I do it because I want to. And YES, I had to buy a new pump this weekend because HOLY HECK did my baby sleep through thenight for a very very long time, and OH MY GOSH did I hurt so badly when I wokeup and WHAT did my girl do? Refused to nurse. So I ran to Walgreens and then to Fred Meyer because I needed relief. TMI perhaps?) :)
No comments:
Post a Comment