Young Joel suggest writing like "no one is reading." It's great advice that I try and follow ... right up until someone who you haven't talked to in months or even years walks up and says, "Hey, I was reading your blog and ..."
That experience is both unnerving and disarming. It makes pretending that no one is reading much harder.
Whenever this happens, like it did three times in the last week, I try act cool, like it's no big thing. After all, I write this stuff expecting someone might read it.
In my head I sweat and furiously click through my postings wondering if I've offended them or if my thoughts weird them out in some way. It's all I can do to not backpedal and blurt out things like, "No you shouldn't see "Chasing Amy" it's not for you. I have the worst taste in movies. I don't know how that picture of Harry Frankfurt's essay on Bullsh*t got there, I don't even think words like that, much less purchase books on the topic ..."
I generally imagine about three people reading what I've written. It's an audience just large enough to justify spell checking. For my imaginary audience I hand pick people who I know aren't easily offended and can deal with my special brand of humour. You know who you are.
they will see us waving from such great heights
"come down now" they'll say
but everything looks perfect from far away
"come down now" but we'll stay "Such Great Heights", The Postal Service
I think the desire to backpedal stems from imagining that I look better from further away.
"come down now" they'll say
but everything looks perfect from far away
"come down now" but we'll stay "Such Great Heights", The Postal Service
I tried writing as if no one was reading, which works fine until, as you have experienced, someone you know tells you that they read your blog. After a waitress at a bar told me that she was reading my blog (I did not even know that she knew my name!), I decided to clean up my blog. I purged nearly everything that was not related to restaurants and bars.
After having received nasty emails and comments over some of the things I have written about, I decided that I did not want to run into someone that was offended by my views. So, now I keep try to keep the more controversial topics off my blog.