Sanitize

January 27, 2009 | Category: In My Life

Sometimes, I watch those commercials for Lysol or Fabreze and wonder if there was a product like that for life - would I use it?

Blogs seem to fall into two groups - the anonymous, outrageous ones where people are free to be exactly what they want to be and the real, identified ones which have to be carefully edited.

This one falls somewhere in between: I mean, it started out anonymous, but I wasn't very good at it. And eventually, I dropped the curtain and had to start being careful what I said.

It didn't go well at first. I though "coming out of the closet" would make me feel more free. As it turns out, I actually felt hog-tied.

What followed has been a long ramp of learning how to write again.

The people in my life have taken to this blog in various ways. Although they have never said so outright, some of the people closest to me disapprove. They don't get it. And sometimes, I wonder, if maybe they don't get me?

My husband has always been supportive. Even at the worst of times, he provided me with tech support to keep it going. We've knocked out a truce about content. I think, in his mind, he would prefer if I had an editorial column somewhere. A weekly handful of inches that was separate from our lives. Something a lot more sanitized.

And yet, he sometimes quotes me to me. Chuckles from his laptop and says "I'd forgotten about that time that the Bear locked Elia out of the house." These archives are as much scrapbook to him as anything else.

Re-organizing this site was, in part, due to a migration my host is doing. Though it won't affect the readers - it did demand some prep. As I go through each post, I've found myself cleaning up grammatical errors and punctuation. As I've added pondered what tags to use, sometimes I've hidden the post altogether - too raw, now, to keep up. Or too revealing, of my family or friends.

I've been conflicted about these changes. As though I owe posterity. some debt to keep it all just the way it was. Between this site and and the prior one, there's almost a decade of archives. Over 2000 posts. 7G of pictures. Over the past few months, I've watched myself grow up: from giving advice on Macs, to getting engaged, to picking a wedding dress, to house-hunting and gestating, to becoming a new mother and the bazillion pictures of his every.single.movement to juggling it all and still making the 5:15 flight to Midway on Thursday afternoon.

Remember the Truman Show? When the producer talked about Truman's life milestones in terms of "episodes"? Since 1997, my life has been captured, increasingly, in posts. I stopped keeping a journal altogether in 2005.

Is it right to tamper with the past?

I don't know.

Some things no longer belong in the public eye. Do I hide the whole post? Or just the parts that need to be protected?

I struggle, and keep on. Not sure until I get there, where I'm going.

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