This piece in Salon about a writer who worries about what her kids will think of what she writes about them is thought-provoking. I used to think of myself as a pretty private person. I mean, I can be a chatterbox, but most of the stuff I shared with others was just light-hearted banter. But since my daughter was born, I have started two blogs: this one and a photo blog about her. So I have put a lot of personal stuff out in cyberspace that virtually (no pun intended) anybody can read.
When my daughter’s old enough to read, she’ll be able to see how much her dad and I doted on her, how we photographed her every move. I wonder, since this will be pretty normal for most kids her age, whether she’ll mind. Whether she’ll want me to take it all down, or maybe just the embarrassing parts. In the Salon piece, the writer mentions another Salon writer who vowed only to write about his kids’ pre-history — that is, just the stuff they’re too young to remember. Might be a good rule. I could try to adopt it, but my urge to write, document, chronicle is pretty strong. (I recently ripped up a bunch of old diaries, ones I started from about 4th grade on.) My daughter might curse the day she was born to a journalist.
