sashinka | observation orientated, with a twist of lime | a blog

Tired and Emotional? Could be...
See, I have no idea what happened at Robyn's place, but I can't help wondering.

How my personal site interacts with people I know is something I've given a lot of thought to.

When I started out, in January, it was me and a couple of mates who read it. Literally a couple. After a little while, other people - more friends, online/weblog-style people - started reading. That was cool, too. If I got forty people a day I thought it was fun, and lots of them were IP addresses that I recognsied when I looked at my stats, and it was a little like having an intimate evening round my house; personal invites, people I knew.

Then two things happened: google started crawling my site, and I got mentioned in the Guardian weblog piece. Both of these things are cool: while I don't want to say that my self-esteem is derived from my stats, there is a certain buzz from a few hundred people visiting your site. It's what every writer wants: an audience. Even if they are only looking for huge boobs latin funk or the latest on Brock Enright or all manner of other disturbing and bizarre search requests. Suddenly, it wasn't an intimate dinner party any more: it was like one of those parties where everyone brings a couple of friends and you look round the room and realise it's your house but you don't know a soul.

People I know but didn't know I have a weblog go in touch with me: I like your blog, it's funny. The first time, it was like someone had found out I have a terrible secret. It's not that it was a secret; it was just something I did. Kinda like a hobby, but slightly more time-consuming. So I never meet people and immediately say "hello, I collect thirties dripware", and I still don't meet people and say "hello, I've got a blog", or at least I hope I don't. I do sometimes find myself talking about it to writeresque people.

And from the second month, I was thoughtful about what I wrote. In January, when it was just me and one other person reading, I was more... honest (and don't bother going back to read that stuff, it's gone). But since then, while what I write is clearly personal I'm mindful of what I say. So I always ask people if I can mention them; either by initial or by what they said. And quite a few times, people have said no, which is cool, and I respect it. So the funniest, most insightful things I hear actually never make it to the blog. Obviously if I think something funny or insightful myself, then there's only me to talk to, so it's different. Except it's a lot harder to judge your own thinking/writing.

But I'm acutely aware that choosing to have a personal website means a few things. First; people think they know you. So there's a few comments about me online from people who don't know me that aren't very accurate. But I guess if I want to make it as any kind of opinion writer I should just get used to that. Second, readers who know me presume something is about them or someone they know; J was convinced I'd gone to lunch at a mutual friends' house, but they just shared an initial. But he read a whole lot into it that just wasn't there. Third, people think this is all I am: acerbic, to-the-point spade-calling truth-teller. Which I am, sometimes. But I'm also way more sensitive than you can tell from here, I'd imagine. And I do lots of things I don't write about. I have a sudden urge to say I help old people and children, but actually it's just not true. But I'm... inevitably more rounded than the snippets you get here.

This is all a roundabout way of saying this: riffing off whatever did or didn't go on in Robyn's life that required an apology - maybe there are things here people don't like, but I feel a strange balancing act of not wanting to apologise for who I am, and not wanting to hurt people. Go figure. And mail me if you have an answer. I need one.