Not QUITE Dooced.

So much has gone on in the last couple of days that I hardy know where to begin.

Thanks for all the kind emails asking where I’d gone—I’m fine, and the blog isn’t broken either. I took it offline for a few days so I could do some thinking.

See, I use names quite freely around here. And I mostly do it because I’m not creative enough to call somebody a nickname on a consistent basis. I can’t call people Actor Adam or PUA Paul the way Dolly manages to. I am not that creative. I accept that. Besides which, people are a very real part of my day, and if I’m sharing my day, then I’m sharing my friends, my acquaintances, and my life.

And there, my friends, lays the crux of the problem. Once upon a time…September 2005 to be exact…I had a lapse in judgment and used some last names. If you recall, when I found this out a few months ago I freaked out, and went back to re-edit the posts to remove all personal indicators. Problem solved—yes? No. Decidedly, No.

We all figure that when we delete something from our blogs, it’s gone forever. But we are naïve—(some of us, probably not you. I get that.)—and we neglect to consider the Google cache. O cursed cache.

My boss was Googling (it is TOO a verb!) himself the other day. And he swears it wasn’t as dirty as it sounds. Anyway, he found himself in a number of places. One of them was on my blog. Yeah. MY BLOG. MY BOSS. MY BOSS READ MY BLOG.

Not only did he read it, but he TOLD me he’d read it. He didn’t mention it at work, thanks be, but on MSN. (Yes, I MSN with my boss—another story, another time. Focus now.)

I immediately took it offline. I told him I deleted it, because I honestly intended to at that point. I was mortified. Humiliated. Horrified. Shocked. Appalled. And chagrined, even. Get the idea or do I need to get out my thesaurus?

So yeah. I’ve been spending my weekend trying to figure out what I was going to do about it.

It’s one thing to post your deepest, darkest, most embarrassing secrets online for a bunch of strangers to read—but your RL friends?!! Oh my goodness! Horrors!

And then I started to think about how messed up that is. I know that I’m an incredibly reserved person. I know that I don’t share as much with people in my everyday life as most other humans do. But that’s me. And I DO share; I just choose to do it with you all. And I have come to cherish that closeness, however falsely perceived it may be, and I want to continue it. But being outed has caused me to reconsider how and what I’m talking about.

I’ve never said anything bad, or even remotely negative, about my boss in this blog. I wouldn’t, I’m genuinely fond of the guy. You can search for the back-posts yourself, I can’t be bothered. I’m a bit stressed out today, and this is by FAR the least of my concerns. But even considering that my comments have been positive (gushingly so, it would appear); it’s made me want to lock this place up tight as a drum.

I’ve had to give that some serious thought, as I don’t want to do it. I like that random strangers can stop in. I love that some of you started as random strangers, and are people I now consider friends. I love that a stranger fixed my template! And that another stranger’s kid asks about me when they go to the mall! And I enjoy reading about socks and spinning, and I especially love that some of you stop in to visit and even though you don’t comment? You come back every single day.

So locking the doors doesn’t seem to be the most hospitable way to deal with my personal issues. So I’m not going to do it.

I’m not even going to close the door. I’m opening it wide up. I’m going to always be aware of the evils of the Cache. I’m going to be more conscious of who might be reading. But I’m not going to self-censor. Fuck that. (See? A big ‘kiss my ass’ to censorship!)

My boss promised to stop reading it…but he was also the first one to ask for a password! *laugh* But I don’t expect that. I DO expect that what I share here, while up for public consumption (nature of the internet and all), is NOT up for discussion in my daily life unless I bring it up—and that just because I’m prepared for the entire internet to know who I had sex with, I’m not prepared to discuss my rather boring sex-life with my peers and co-workers. I may be a bit of an emotional exhibitionist, but I still only want it to be for select people I don’t already know!

So…that brings us back online, and onto bigger and questionably better topics. Which I will write about tonight, but I will likely not post about until tomorrow, as this is quite long enough for you folks to digest in one sitting, thankyewverymuch.

G’night, and thanks for stopping by.