What a concept...

I read a blog entry tonight that I really didn't like. It was the second time this week that that same blogger had said something that really put me off.

So rather than comment, either nicely or nastily (not that I'm in the habit of making nasty comments, but that response is certainly not unheard of in blogland), or go off on a diatribe on my own blog, I decided to just unsubscribe them from my Go*gle Read*r. So simple, so efficient. One button and poof, they're gone.

This does illustrate though how little we truly know other bloggers. I started reading this particular blog because its author was funny and asked some interesting questions. I would never have suspected how very different we were in certain fundamental beliefs. While I think the world would be a very boring place if we were all the same, and while I do value diversity and tolerance and love a good, open, RESPECTFUL debate of the issues, there are some worldviews that just leave me cold, and unable to find common ground. Today I saw one of those worldviews.

Some bloggers, like Tertia, let it all hang out so to speak. Others speak honestly but use pseudonyms. Still others talk only of fluff. Most though, find their own way somewhere in the middle. Like an old Billy Joel song, we all have a stranger inside ourselves. Some things we share, some we hold secret. Blogging gives those stranger aspects of ourselves an outlet though, a way of choosing who and what we want to be at any given moment. I tend to blog pretty openly because that's the kind of person I am, but there are some aspects of my life I don't choose to share. I wouldn't use this platform to share the gory details of a fight with my husband because I believe that things like that should remain private (and of course because he reads my blog ;-). Hi honey.) I wouldn't share something that would humiliate my family or anyone I care about. I wouldn't share the name of my town. Others draw the line in different places, some further in, some further out. Either way, we need to remember that reading a blog is not the same as living with someone day in and day out. A blog is just a narrow slice of someone's life. Sometimes we just "click" with another blogger and know without a doubt that we're twins separated at birth. Other times, like today, we read something and wonder how much we ever knew them at all...

In any case, as for the blogger who prompted this introspection, sayonara baby. It's not worth my time or energy to either debate you or allow myself to get dragged down by what you say.