Writing and The Internets

"I can't believe the stuff you'll write about. Don't you keep anything private?"


Well, actually. Sometimes. For example, I change names to protect those who are innocent or unaware that I have made a conscious choice to live my life on the internet. The knowledge that my mom reads my blog does have a small impact on my inclination to overshare (okay, granted, it's a very very small impact, because let's face it, I got the overshare gene from SOMEONE...), but it should be acknowledged that, when it comes down to it, there's not a lot that I consider completely off limits.


I don't know why that should be, but as usual, I have a theory -- and it has to do with the nature of technology. You see, technology enables me to work from home, and yet be conversant and involved with people in offices across the country. It's both isolating (I'm alone, in an office) and connecting (I'm talking to someone in Wyoming!) at the same time. Blogging (and social networking, and ... well, texing and email too, I suppose) is sort of like that. I'm writing words on a screen -- in a vacuum. Isolated. However, people are reading them and taking something from them. Connected.


I think that in some way, writing is always an isolated activity -- the writer sits and scribbles and then sends the words out there -- but in a world that becomes increasingly isolated in many ways (our communities are so often virtual, are they not?) the immediacy and the personal nature of something like blogging creates a sense of intimacy in the way that perhaps reading a novel does not.


It was interesting to me when, as a teacher, I often heard people say that they hated to read and write, but they LOVED to text, and email. (Apparently, they really only hated to read what I was assigning... sigh!) It's all reading. It all counts. And it's interesting to me now when writing -- even in text-speak -- and social networking -- which is primarily text based, I think -- is given both as a "why we broke up" and "how we met" story. "She was emailing and texting someone she met online, so we broke up" vs "I reconnected with him on Facebook and it was like magic! We would chat online for hours, and he wrote the best emails."


Does writing -- at least, in an internet setting -- reveal people ("I'm more myself when I write online") or does it hide them ("she doesn't know that I'm married! Bwah hah hah!") ?


I don't know the answer to that.


I do know this: I don't overshare simply for the joy of oversharing. I tell stories -- generally, ones in which I come off like a bit of a twit (which, well, I am) -- in an effort to connect to something beyond the cold glow of the computer screen and reach out to a world that I don't often see... and I appreciate the medium that allows me to do it -- and I will continue to do it.


But don't worry.


I'll change your name.