Having the FCC Over for Dinner

I know what if feels like to not write what you want to write. Internal censors batten down what you can say on your blog once family and friends have started reading it. It is like they are all gathered in one room and everything said has become the precarious navigation of a dinner gathering from hell.

I started out feeling so liberated with the anonymity of the net, but then I shared my blog and homepage with co-workers and old college friends. My mom figured out how to go from a picture blog I'd created, then to my Blogger profile, then to my Brettanicus blog, and soon I was editing past entries about reading pornstar blogs and logging the nocturnal activities of various windows in the high rise across from me. It morphed into the more conservative ideas of logging cell phone conversations and photographing odd scraps of garbage found on the sidewalks of Minneapolis. I'm amazed that my ex hasn't googled me yet; it's only a matter of time.

I guess this is why I have stuck with fiction, for the most part, but I think people have caught on that fiction is more honest than the truth.

I could start a new blog, disconnected from my current identity on the net, to regain that anonymity and kill the censor. But something stops me. Part of it is that this little space has become an extension of my home and life, and I don't want to abandon it. Sometimes a little censorship (I keep mistyping this word as "censorshit") and restraint can be a good thing. The other part is that I wish everyone could just be an open book. The more open we become, the more we discover we're not so different from everyone else. But the danger is that honesty can so easily hurt the people we care about, either directly or indirectly. Handling a pen is like handling a gun. You have to be careful who you point it at, or someone is going to get hurt.

But what am I worried about? My family and friends have gotten bored and moved on to other things. My only regular reader is Kelsye, and how easily I've fallen for her and the Lady Kio (aka The Divine Miss Dauphine). Something is very alluring about someone you only speak to across the digital divide, half a world away.

私はあなたの想像の作りごとである。