The Blog - Ross Wintle

I’ve been considering the purpose of this Blog lately

It’s really only “notes to self” and yet, I started it after being inspired by other people, who were writing interesting stuff…or at least stuff about what they were up to that was of interest to me. It’s stuff that I’d like good friends to be able to see, but not stuff that I want the whole world to see.

Truth is that, though there’s an element of pride in having a set of hopefully interesting/funny /useful notes that others can read, I’m slightly embarassed about it. Some people recently heard that I had a Blog and all questioned with surprise…”you have a blog???”. In opening it up to the world, I open myself to the critical eye of the world.

I originally set up my Blog such that people had to be approved as readers. However, I recently “imported” my Blog into my Facebook “notes” application – which meant that people could easily be updated when I post something new, and I really value having RSS feeds of other people’s Blogs as it makes it easier to stay up to date. Both of these required me to open up my Blogger RSS feed, which I can only do by opening up the whole Blog to the world.

I’m nervous about this.

I don’t mind people that I know are nice and won’t make silly comments reading and commenting but I don’t think I want everyone to see. There’s a security risk in there, and, though I’m careful about what I write and I make sure I set my Blog up so that search engines aren’t informed about my posts, I don’t want all of what I write searchable by Google and so on.

This, though, poses some challenges.

Firstly, I don’t currently have a way to only allow RSS access to a select group. I’ve tried importing my notes into a WordPress setup, but this doesn’t seem to allow secure RSS feeds either (if such things exist).

There’s also pride in knowing who’s reading too. I don’t want to think I’m big because the world can read my musings and hopefully be entertained by them. But having control of who can see means I’m retaining control and I become aware of how popular I am (or am not). That could work either way.

And I’m challenged about what I’m writing too. Why am I nervous about the world seeing it? Do I not believe it? Do I not think it’s interesting/useful/funny? Am I not prepared to stand by what I’ve written and be identified with it?

So I’m a bit confused about what to do at the moment. I think I’ve turned public access off, but it may be on and off for a while, while I work out what to do.

If anyone IS reading (I know at least one person is), I’d appreciate your comments and thoughts.