We used pseudonyms, and every so often there’d be a bit of a rumble through blogland as another name was cracked and a marriage or – more commonly – a career cracked with it.
It was probably Facebook that changed all that and made it perfectly normal to start posting some remarkably personal information fairly publicly.
Somewhere within that revolution that brought everyone online, secret blogging seems to have become less common and blogs – certainly those that I read – have become much more open.
I really struggled with that at first. My ordinary name is very English but also very unusual, and I really didn’t want to be restricted by having to post in a way that would be appropriate to work colleagues or job applicants googling to find out more about me.
I wanted to build a place where I could be honest and open, where I could be myself and not the self that work sometimes needs me to be.
I’m conscious, of course, that I’m certainly a long way from anonymous. If someone who knows me happens to visit here, there are a good few bits that are fairly instantly recognisable. Even more so to friends who know me well. And there are a couple of photographs dotted about that are undoubtably me.
So apart from using a different surname, everything here is entirely me. More entirely, perhaps, than I am in my ordinary life because here I have my own space and this place that is all about my own goals and journey and ponderings.
For me, there’d be no value in setting up a blog and then having to write fiction or meticulously anonomise everything I wanted to post. And then worry that someone might still guess it’s me.
In response to “Do you blog anonymously or as yourself?” over at the Daily Post.