Sharing personal stories online
I try to be very careful about what and how much I share on the Internet. I maintains a blog that pretty much share every detail of my life for seven years. The good thing is, that was at the talents of my college years and my early 20s, when there wasn't too much of any consequence going on in my life, relatively speaking.
Still, these days, I almost wish that I had a form where I could share all of my thoughts, feelings, and experiences.
In some ways, I feel like I'm trapped in my own head. I have my husband to talk to you, as well as a few close, old friends. The problem is, these people are close enough to me to not be able to look at things completely objectively. They're also enmeshed in some of the situations.
This morning, I was woken up by a stressful business text message. wasn't necessarily bad, but I'll share a little bit of myself when I would bet that dealing with stressful situations that are new to me can make me freeze up sometimes because I'm so afraid of making a mistake. I'm lucky to work in a profession where feelings are king, so I could flat out say that my feelings are feeling a little burdensome right now.
All that said, I wish I had an anonymous online forum where I could just work through some of these things and get the feedback of people who aren't invested in my life. The pitfalls of that are that people on the Internet aren't always polite. I guess that's a mild way of putting it.
I'm not saying that I won't be able to tell me what I want to hear, but being delicate about things and not making assumptions about situations is key when you only know a small fraction of the situation. Not a lot of people tend to abide by the standard, though. It's much easier to judge.
Unfortunately, I was at the end of such harsh criticisms when I went through some family crises last year. I have an online forum where I felt safe to share, but I ended up being ceaselessly criticized. That's increased my wariness of sharing personal things online, especially with regards to my marriage, parenting, or my career, and even more so when I'm just venting.
I'm curious to hear others' perspectives on this. How do you decide how much of your life to share online? Is the Internet somewhere where you return if you needed advice or just to vent?
#fopp blogging
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Comments
LeaPea2417 wrote on February 18, 2015, 1:07 PM
It depends on what is on my mind. Sometimes I like advice from people on the internet and sometimes I like to vent. It depends on the situation.
DEADLYKITTENS wrote on February 18, 2015, 3:18 PM
I try to not share too much about my personal life but it doesnt seem to work very well.
GemOfAGirl wrote on February 19, 2015, 7:11 AM
I hide behind a pseudonym here, specifically so I can feel free to share whatever's on my mind without fear of reprisal from the ones I love. My sister would probably kill me if she read some of the stuff I've written about her here, lol.
On Facebook, I'll share little snippets here and there, but I'll only share truly personal stuff when I already know that I'm not going to receive any negative reaction, and I'll also ensure that by using stricter privacy settings on certain things that I share.
I also make it a point to never, EVER share anything on Facebook that my employer could use to fire me later (especially since the point of view of my employer very rarely matches my own). As a result, I never vent about work online, ever.
MsBiz wrote on February 19, 2015, 9:52 AM
I feel the same way, although I don't do it much anymore.
MsBiz wrote on February 19, 2015, 9:54 AM
I know what you mean. Sometimes I'll want all the privacy, but days like yesterday, I wanted to spill all...
MsBiz wrote on February 19, 2015, 9:58 AM
That sounds like a sensible approach. I've A strict policy of anonymity, never using my real name or picture, until the site. I'm not really sure why I felt compelled to put up a real picture here -- maybe just to keep myself accountable and a little more objective in what I have to say. My Facebook and public social media tied to my real name is pretty conservative for the reason you stated: Work. I'm self-employed, but my clients do try to find me from time to time.
cheri wrote on February 20, 2015, 9:09 PM
I share personal posts too but I have certain limits as to protect my own privacy and the people concerned as well.