I tried writing in a journal a few times when I was younger, but it seemed like someone would always manage to read it. Each time someone else read one of my journals, it felt like an incredible violation of privacy. It also usually resulted in that person being mad at me for what I had written, which didn’t help. So I stopped writing down my thoughts and feelings and just kept them to myself. 
Then along comes this internet thing and along with it social media and blogs. Now journals aren’t just little books with cute, easy to pick locks on them. They are 1’s and 0’s out in the open for the whole world to read.
The whole flippin’ world.
The thought of it was and still is horrifying to me. But I put on my big girl panties and dutifully signed up for social media accounts and even posted a comment now and then.
Several years have passed since joining the cyberspace society and so far I haven’t completely pissed off anyone with anything I have posted online. At least not that I know of. Yet. I got brave about a year ago and started a blog. It was a big deal for me to do this, but I wasn’t writing anything terribly personal. Just talking about stuff I made and having fun with it. Still haven’t completely pissed off anyone that I know of.
Then I recently decided to make a go of this whole being an author/writer thing, and started this blog. I also set up a Twitter account dedicated to it. It has been interesting “meeting” new people via Twitter and seeing what others are sharing. I see all of these people tweeting back and forth and I find I’m still mostly standing on the sidelines. Still the shy girl who is afraid to write anything that someone else might read. (I have already thought about just deleting this post and not publishing it because this is the most personal thing I have ever written online.)
I’m supposed to feel invincible on social media and say whatever I want, right? People frequently overshare or act like trolls hiding behind masks of user names, right? I just don’t feel that power of anonymity, even on the accounts where I have a user name mask.
It probably doesn’t help that I’ve always been a bit socially awkward. Those of you who have known me for a while can attest to this. This awkwardness is still with me in cyberspace. Perhaps I need to just accept that I’m going to be awkward because that’s who I am. I’ve mostly accepted my awkwardness in real life and I still have friends and people who love me. The same can be true here in cyberspace.
I don’t know what prompted me to sit down and write this post. Maybe because it has been nagging at me lately. Maybe someone else out there feels the same way and we are destined to be friends in our awkward ways. Maybe trolls will see this as an easy target and I’ll have to deal with asshats making crappy comments. Who knows.
But here it is in 1’s and 0’s for the whole flippin’ world to read.