@Cheri I hope we don't lose you from here… "Companion or detriment?" Maybe it's both, at the same time, sometimes more companion, sometimes more detriment.
@Cheri do you think if you made your site more of a "Digital Garden" that you would lose your online buddies? I like that concept of a Digital Garden and feel like that is more of what I do these days. Well maybe a Digital Dumping Ground as mine is almost more journal in nature now that I think about it. 😄
@Cheri See you on the toot site. I write knowing my mom is my audience, therefore knowing if I post something personal, I’m going to get annoying questions about it. So, my page floats more towards a digital garden, where I outline my interests and not much else.
@Cheri We hope you don't leave us. I know I will miss your posts. But understand you doing what's best for you. How about getting around letting anyone see details of your life by posting under a pseudonym? Online friends whom you get to know better over time can know your real name but not, if you prefer not to. I mean, that's how blogging worked until Facebook forced us all to enter our real names.
@Cheri I get it. I'd hate to lose you, but I also know you have to do what's best for you. Maybe just take a break from blogging for awhile. There's no official bloggy rules so you can take a break for months until you just have to blurt something out.
My problem with blogging is when I make it a chore. Oh, I should blog something just because I expect myself to do so. Like during the early pandemic lockdown - I was too busy doomscrolling. :)
@Cheri I’m relieved to see I am not the only one here with these sorts of hesitations. My blog face is just so boring. We don’t share photos of our kids online in public. I live in a small town, so posting things that are too personal is an invitation for gossip. What to do?
@Cheri I always look forward to reading your posts here on Micro.Blog, and I think you post personal, but not necessarily private things. Your posts is just like most of the web ought to be in my mind. Cheerful and unpretentious. And I somehow always end up knowing a thing or two about miscellany. I hope you’ll stay here, but I also see your conundrum. Can it be Cheri Baker, the author, vs. Cheri Baker the individual that is not finding a common cause? You could always have two blogs again! 😃 Hope I’ll be able to read your non-worky things still.
@Cheri I would really miss reading your blog, so selfishly I hope you keep writing there; however, I feel slightly to more-than-slightly ill every time I post anything. Vulnerability hangover -- so the condition has a name!
@ericmwalk @pratik @bradenslen @odd @fabio @pilchuck I have no desire to leave micro.blog (I love it here!) so I imagine I can adapt any new internet habits to still have a presence here. Something to think about, for sure.
@skoobz My mom reads my blog too. I call her to talk and she interrupts me. "Yeah, I read that on your blog." 😄
@KimberlyHirsh @fgtech @annahavron Thanks! And I'm glad it's not just me feeling these things. (I figure it must be at least a somewhat common issue...)
@Cheri I get how you're feeling, although I also enjoy your blog posts and would miss them if they stopped 🙂 I think it's definitely something everyone has to weigh up – where do you draw the line as to what's "too private" and therefore not publishable? Sometimes I feel the inverse applies too, where I'd happily vent about something to people online, but not if people I know IRL might see! Hopefully you'll figure something out that works for you 🙂
@Cheri your writing has matter so much to me. It caused me to reflect and make changes for the better.
@Cheri I have started writing in Google Keep or Google Docs when I'm not sure if something is too personal to post. Then it's out of me, and I take a couple of days to let it sit, and either come back to it and see if I want to share it, or completely forget I wrote it.
@Cheri sometimes I have the same issue. And that is probably why I turned into posting more photos instead of text (that and the fact that I am not very creative in writing). I try not to share private things as it just feels weird. For some reason, I am more comfortable sharing with the community here, but I get this feeling that it would be weird if my colleagues or a neighbor discover my blog. I hope you continue around and I really enjoy your posts.😊
@Cheri awesome post. Awesome because I've had the same issues and was glad to know the term for it, vulnerability hangover. Thanks for that.
Like I said I had same issue with my personal journal. It was semi-anonymous before, where it only had my name on it and nothing else. So people cannot really tell who it was unless I explicitly told them it was my site. That allowed me to write personal posts and not worry about sharing it online. But then I decided to slap my custom domain name on it, which had my full name and I regretted it after a few months. To this day, I wish I left it as a semi-anonymous blog/journal. If you wanted to keep writing the same way, maybe follow pratik's advice and do so via pseudonym.
Lastly, on digital gardens and blogs. This might not be a popular opinion, but I don't think they're even the same thing. I have my own digital garden, I've looked at other people's digital gardens. I have never once bookmarked, or tried to follow someone else's digital garden. Their blogs yes, but not their digital gardens. To me, a digital garden houses your thoughts and ideas, the goal being to generate new ideas. The blog is where these new ideas show up. So I don't see a digital garden being able to replace a blog.
@Cheri Thanks for sharing Cheri. I'm struggling with this exact thing. I suppose balancing between personal and not-so-personal posts is quite hard. At some point, I end up not writing/posting at all. You just do not know how much to share and not share!
@Cheri Will miss your posts but I do understand if you do stop posting them. Hope you find an option that let's you keep the blog alive :)
@Cheri Of course I hope you keep blogging, because I love reading your posts. 🙂 But I get needing to reflect on how much to share from time to time. I do the same, sometimes getting into a routine of writing a lot and sometimes going more quiet, knowing my blog is always there whenever I'm ready.