Blogging

I don't know what to do with this blog.  I know it is important to me. There is something about this, where almost no one who reads it knows who I am, that enforces a honesty and a critical distance about what the heck is going on in my life that I don't have anywhere else.  I try (and I think I succeed because people keep reading it) to pull back from individual situations to bigger issues that more people might feel.  It has been far more useful to me than any therapy has ever been.  When I'm upset, it helps me figure things out.  Granted, I may not always figure the right thing out, but there is a power to it that I cannot deny.

But.  Is it healthy?  Is it ethical? 

The first question is how it affects me.  I think it makes me more introspective, and I'm probably pretty deep on the introspective side anyway.  Being raised by a shrink, I value the hypothetical process of therapy, even if I can't get that with a therapist myself.  But in therapy, you are in relationship with another person.  It is naval gazing, without a doubt, but naval gazing with connectedness.  This is just pure naval gazing.  I feel like there is a way that I am able to bridge a gap between my intellect and my emotional side--I have much more perspective on what makes me tick than I would have if I didn't blog here.  But maybe I don't need anymore perspective!

Sometimes I wonder if it further bifurcates me--if I'm more likely to save my feelings for here, rather than deal with them in real time.

But if it were only question of how it impacts me, I would keep the blog.  But how it affects someone I might be involved with is the issue that nags.  Is this a fair thing to do?  Part of me says it is OK because it is anonymous.  No one would ever be able to figure out who I'm actually dating.  Their nom-de-blogs are so obscure that I've honestly forgotten almost all their names, except MaxEarnest and John.  MaxEarnest picked his own nom-de-blog and John read my blog so I don't have ethical questions there.  

But, if I do meet someone I want to date, does the existence of this help or hurt?  When do I owe him a hint of its existence?  At what point in a relationship should I stop blogging if I haven't told him about it?  I don't like to blog about guys until after the 2nd date because, really, why? But then, they are actual people, and I'm capturing only one side, through my lens, completely. I really felt like the blog was good for MaxEarnest and I, but I wouldn't have told him it existed if I thought we were going to get together.  I felt like it hurt John and I, because he would read sometimes, but not others, wanted me to tell him things directly, instead of blogging about it (although he never once asked me to not blog--he just asked me to tell him directly), but sometimes I'd tell him something and he'd have already read it and be impatient.  I thought he knew some things and learned later he hadn't. And the truth of the matter is that I tend to keep my emotional cards fairly close to my chest, and this allows that more.  When I stop blogging about something, I'm more likely to tell the person I'm involved with.

There's a guy I'm talking with right now, nothing serious, but I was aware that I could easily have told him about this blog after he asked me a question and I didn't.  And that makes me wary. Of course, we all leave information out when we're dating.  I agonize over when to tell a guy that I'm not comfortable with abortion as a form of birth control.  The blog may be more like that--something he should know before it gets serious, or something I need to let go over before it is serious, if I want to keep blogging.  But it also feels like a bigger deal than that I personally don't want to use abortion as birth control--it certainly opens up a lot more for discussion, if he is at all curious. It leaves me uncertain as to whether this is a good thing or not.