Oh come on. This has been up for almost two hours.
So, time to go off-topic!
Why are there so many adopted children in Montana?
That's a really annoying map without any data about relative numbers of kids being taken into protective custody. Now back to ME.
So, what is the bad outcome that you are worried about? Hawaii saying to someone "My mommy has a blog and her pretend name is heebie"? Or you're worried that she'll read over your shoulder while you're writing?
a) IME kids are super interested in getting to scold parents, but not at all interested in digging. At least that's true of mine-- my allowed cigarette qutient is a topic of fevered discussion "Every cigarette makes your life 5 minutes shorter!" "If I had 5 minutes left, I'd spend them on an iceberg with a smoke!"
b) ex-porn stars have a more serious version of the dilemma, and a few of them have addressed it intelligently in writing. I didn't save the links. Possibly hg will reject this approach, since actual blamelessness seems important in her past writing. I think that this is a mistake-- objective blame doesn't matter, only subjective scorn.
Express indifference, I say-- your kids will possibley look at the front page once, they will be extremely unlikely to imagen their parents as fully realized and potentially interesting or disturbing people until they are themsleves adults. Kids already know too much about their parents, they'd flee asap if only there were a comfortable way to do that.
Hawaii saying to someone "My mommy has a blog and her pretend name is heebie"?
This is the fear. Especially if she were to say it to sensitive family members.
Possibly hg will reject this approach, since actual blamelessness seems important in her past writing. I think that this is a mistake-- objective blame doesn't matter, only subjective scorn.
I don't know what this means.
I wouldn't worry about it. Sally and Newt might easily be lurking here -- I don't particularly hide it -- but they don't seem interested. And really, you've still got years. H-G may be almost reading, but unless she's really unusual she's years away from making coherent sense of chatty adult writing. She might look at it, and read the words, but I don't think there's much chance she'd make real sense of it.
6: There are all sorts of things that I wish my son didn't say to certain family members. He's not really very good at it. Apparently, context sensitive discretion isn't innate.
Do Sally and Newt know you go by Lizardbreath? How old were they when they became aware of that?
Especially if she were to say it to sensitive family members.
My casual impression is that you haven't trash talked your family here nearly often enough for it to be a problem unless some one was willing to obsessively search through years of the archives.
I don't remember? A long time ago? I don't talk about it much, although I do bring the occasional commenter over for dinner or something. Like, I wouldn't swear that if you grabbed one of them today and asked for the name of the blog and my pseudonym that they would know it offhand, but they certainly have known it at various times, they just don't care much.
@13: So I've been missing the designated "trash talk the family" blog?
re: 12
That's sort of my wife's attitude. She knows I occasionally in real life meet people from this blog, and from a music forum/chat room that I'm part of. She may occasionally have seen me read this site, and vaguely recall the name. But she might not, as it's just never registered as important.
Ok, this is all sounding very reasonable. No lying, but just generally assuming that I'm boring to kids and taking safety in that.
I do post pictures of them, which they find fascinating. So that may tempt them a little more than just Unfogged would. But we do have other online photos - a flickr account, a tumblr that Jammies keeps up, to steer them towards.
7. I had the idea thta actually being right was important to you, rather than just being seen to be right. Kids IMO basically only care about impressions.
If 6 is the issue, do the kids spend much time talking about you to other people in the family? Soccer, cooking, whatever.
I had the idea thta actually being right was important to you, rather than just being seen to be right.
Uh...I think so? I don't think I care too much if I appear to be right, but I like to think things through and come to solid conclusions?
do the kids spend much time talking about you to other people in the family? Soccer, cooking, whatever.
Some? If we're going to visit someone, we chat about them and their life. Kids make random comments.
As a kid, I would have found a parent's blog where I was discussed to be irresistible, even if I didn't understand 100%, I'd want to read what they said about me. (And I would not have had a sense of humor or any understanding at all.) I read every scrap of paper they thought they'd hidden, looked through every drawer of theirs when they weren't home, etc. the only time I didn't do stuff like that was December since I liked being surprised about Xmas gifts. I think you treat it like a diary. Yes, you have a blog, no you won't let her read it because it's private, because everyone deserves to have a private place to tell their stories if they want it. You could give her a diary/blog/whatever of her own, too, if she'd go for that. I know you want them to read your personal one eventually, but I think they'd need to be old enough to have some distance from their childhood foibles and view you as someone they might like to know better.
Anecdote: My sister was a pretty funny kid in odd ways. Despite the fact that she's 30, she has no sense of humor whatsoever about her quirks (mostly outgrown and not all that unusual, truly) which I remember vividly. She is still extremely angry about a slideshow I put together for her rehearsal dinner with cute kid pictures where I told stories that I'd run past her other bridesmaids to be sure there was nothing mean-spirited. (I mentioned that her favorite foods were hot dogs and Pringles. So not cool, apparently.) She would probably not be the sort to find such a thing cute or funny, just mortifying and rude and inconsiderate.
I think 20 may be on to something - there's a big difference between lurking on Unfogged and lurking on the family diary.
I think you treat it like a diary. Yes, you have a blog, no you won't let her read it because it's private, because everyone deserves to have a private place to tell their stories if they want it.
How exactly does this work, though, short of actually locking the blog down?
Yes, you have a blog, no you won't let her read it because it's private
It's private! Only complete strangers are allowed to read it!
I keep writing and deleting stuff because I have complicated feelings about the whole thing I can't quite articulate, having to do partly with my own bloggy nature. This comment will self destruct. This comment has eaten itself.
23: Maybe you need to switch to snapchat?
I don't trust my intuition about this, because I have an insane relationship with my parents that involves not telling them anything ever that I don't absolutely have to, and my instincts are to generalize from that and to tell no one anything ever. Except that I like talking about myself, hence the pseudonymous blogging.
So, I try to correct for the fact that I know I'm insane on this front by not actually putting much efforts into keeping secrets from anyone except my actual parents.
25: I'm kind of like that too. I try to keep as much secret as I can from my mom, and I have to fight a tendency to keep secrets from everybody elso too.
If my mom knew I had a personal blog, she would initially be skeptical and critical of the content and writing, until she determined whether third parties enjoyed the writing or not. Once she determined that they did (I arrogantly assume), then she would be my number 1 biggest fan ever, raving absurdly about any sneeze I managed to capture. I would really like to keep this firewall intact.
I think there is going to be a lot of variation between children here. My kids are *completely* uninterested in anything I might say online. The only comment they've ever made about it is that I have a stupid pseudonym. But different kids might be different.
I'm reminded of an interview with Kristen Bell where she said she would let her kids watch her nude scene in a movie. Everyone's response was "who'd want to watch their mom's nude scene?"
21: Unless you think she's going to go through your browser history or look at your e-mail accounts or something (I'd be worried most about browser history, to be honest), I just wouldn't tell her your pseud (or hers). I wouldn't discuss what you're writing about other than general "my life." Just don't leave tempting things out where she'll notice them. I'm figuring that as she gets older, she'll learn to respect your privacy enough not to do really intrusive snooping. I think I outgrew being very, very nosy at about 11. I think your pseudonymity is good enough that she wouldn't be able to find your blog by simple Google searches.
22: In real life, it would be terribly difficult not to be able to vent to friends who you trust to keep your secrets, or trust your therapist, etc. I don't see this as very different, especially for venting purposes. I try not to resent folks who need to complain about me privately and expect the same from them.
As a practical measure, could you not use a Greasemonkey script or something like that to change all references to HG in your browser to something googleproof? I suppose that's still kind of actively hiding it, but it seems fairly innocuous.
28: I am sure yours are probably more the norm, but I figured I'd throw my opinion out there in case nobody else was a really nosy kid or had a really nosy kid, since those do exist. I've outgrown it, but I figure it was worth mentioning. Also, my sister is pretty much the only person I know who doesn't like stories about stuff she did when she was little, but it is definitely something she feels strongly about.
I think I outgrew being very, very nosy at about 11
I think I might outgrow being very very nosy when I turn 51. But it seems pretty unlikely.
28: To be fair, your personal blog isn't generally about them, though.
I will come back to this but I have to go swimming right now.
32: It's not that I'm not interested. I just try really hard to respect other people's privacy. If I realize there are unfortunate acoustics and I can overhear a conversation that was supposed to be private, I walk away. I really hate to eavesdrop or see other people's correspondence. Occasionally friends will assume I've told the boyfriend about some topic they discussed with me and are surprised when they have to give him the backstory. On the other hand, I'm very much an open book about my life, even the unflattering bits. I think it saves me a lot of worry that someone will tell the wrong person something I'd rather keep private.
Why are there so many adopted children in Montana?
I'm guessing because of the similarities of that map to this one.
2 -- Looking at the counties, some strike me as very sparsely populated, others as locations of Reservations.
I get that kids like to snoop, but speaking as an infrequent reader/commenter here, I think people underestimate how much stuff is out there and how harmless most of it is. It's one of those "the future ain't what it used to be" things: we do live in a surveillance state, and there's no getting away from the cameras and everyone can find out everything about anyone, but you'd have to really dig or get lucky to find anything really shocking about most people.
I Googled myself just now, for example. Over 8 million hits despite my name being unique. In order: one of the three registries from my wedding last year, a blog we set up for the wedding, two "mylife.com" pages for my mom and my sister (which would be kind of creepy if they weren't years out of date), some kind of mindless and not-very-good wedding registry clickbait, two very minor newspaper articles more than 10 years old, the newspaper article about a wedding two years ago in which I was a groomsman, my Google+ profile I haven't updated in over a year, and a five-year-old comment I posted on a World of Warcraft blog. There might be interesting stuff in some of those, or deeper into the search results, but I wouldn't worry too much about what those say about me.
Now consider how much more there is out there about heebie, and how much more there will be by the time HP can really start browsing this stuff.
(I got that many hits by using my first and last name, without quotation marks. Using my middle name too, and/or quotation marks, gives much fewer hits, but the first few are still similar.)
But then again, maybe I'm just really boring.
So is 38 saying "don't worry, because she won't locate the family diary"?
I don't know about you but I just can't wait till urple's kid(s) grow up and discover the blog.
I'm not sure if you're talking about this site or the LJ. If the latter, you can set something so people are supposed to be be 15 years old to it. They have to click a button to say they are 15 or whatever - I realise this is no deterrent for most kids but I thought Hawaii was a very conscientious rule/ follower.
If it's this site, all you can do is say "it's for my grownup friends".
The LJ site. Maybe I'll do so. She is indeed.
37: A Native man sees the pwnage and a single tear rolls down his cheek.
Heh. Your map doesn't explain Beaverhead County, though.
40: What I'm saying is, by the time she gets through posts like this one, she'll be old enough not to be traumatized by posts like this one.
(1) My kid didn't started reading my blog until just recently -- as in a year or two ago. She's fifteen now. And she's known about it all along, and known that she was a star member of my cast, as it were. So you probably have a few years, I think.
(2) My family all know about my blog, as well as all my other writing, and none of them read anything I write, except one of my brothers, who reads me basically just to troll me now and then. But YMMV. (I think your family is less fucked up than mine?)
Oh -- my kid LOVES my blog now, btw, especially the older posts about her as a small child. So there's that!
48 is useful. I think our dishing has been fairly similar.
It has certainly occurred to me that it might be slightly awkward if Rory ever happened upon certain corners of the archives. She does know both about this place and my pseudonym. But I am pretty sure I am safe relying on her lack of interest.
At what point is it wrong to write about someone without their knowledge?
At what point I do not know, but I think this is an interesting (and for parents who blog, or who do other internet-ty things, an important) question. I have certainly seen some parental writing about older children (not here, but at Slate-Salon-type places) that makes me feel a bit uneasy. There's a difference between 'my 14-month old pooped in the bathtub' and 'my 14-year old is on anti-anxiety meds,' you know?
I dunno. Amusing and lighthearted anecdotage about the trials and travails of family life? I don't see a problem. But where there are serious issues, I think a troubled/challenged child should have some right/expectation to privacy.
(In a private Facebook group to which I belong, a woman is currently in despair over her 19-year old son, who pulled a gun on her, and against whom she is now asked to testify. Wow. I don't even know her last name, though, so I guess she and her son are basically anonymized? [could I find out her last name if I really tried? I have no idea, I have no real inclination to try]).
Would Hawaiian Punch even understand what a personal blog is? If not, then just call it something else, and make it sound boring. Maybe you could say it's a newsletter to keep in touch with some of your old friends who have moved away, and that heebie is your old nickname, which you don't use any more. So uninteresting!
I have an insane relationship with my parents that involves not telling them anything ever that I don't absolutely have to
This is me. I think this came from me trying to force them to give me more space, and not own every issue, problem and decision in my life. But I think I overdid it... now they have given up on ever finding out anything interesting about me. (Also now they just make up stuff about me to tell to their friends.)
I should probably delete my blog, but really don't want to and am tempted to write there again. I don't think the girls will have any interest in it or awareness of it any time soon, and that by the time they do norms may have changed sufficiently to let it through. I don't know. I do not want my parents reading it or here or anything I've written under my real name, though I can't stop them. They've made it clear they're similarly not interested.
Do you still have your Live Journal Account up? Do you worry about them reading that? Or is this just about Unfogged?
So, that was a stupid question. In my defense, I read about half way down and did a search for Live Journal. Thinking that nobody had asked the question I asked it. I never thought to search for LJ.
OK, so you've basically got two issues really - 1, Hawaii/kids reading your blog , and 2, your wider friends and family knowing about it.
2 - if Hawaii reads it, even if she says to someone that you have a blog, is it likely that she will have memorised the url to pass on? You're worried she'll pass on the pseud?
1 - my kids have always known mine was there. (There's been hardly anything in the last couple of years.) Sometimes they would ask, "are you putting this on the blog?" They can blog on it if they want, but I think the older two have done maybe one post each. As far as I know they have never been regular readers. Not writing such personal stuff about them came naturally as they got older.
I did also have a private blog (which I never bother with any more because I talk to that group of friends in different ways now), and there are passworded posts on my main blog. You can obviously friendlock anything you're more concerned about people seeing.
My kids just think it's normal though, because that's what they've grown up with - they have had online presences - through us, and now independently - from before they can remember. I'm not sure they'll ever have the same level of angst about the whole thing as we have.
Um, that was all fairly useless. I don't think I worry about this enough. My blog is about as anonymous as yours - I don't use our real names, and I don't say where we live, although it wouldn't be difficult to work out. There are photos. I don't say anything really on it that I wouldn't say to anyone I knew in person, but there's something about the aggregate of it .... but /shrug/ I just can't get too worked up about it.
2 - if Hawaii reads it, even if she says to someone that you have a blog, is it likely that she will have memorised the url to pass on? You're worried she'll pass on the pseud?
Right, I'm worried that she'll pass on the pseud. That's the main fear.
The unusual spelling of 'geebie' is probably some protection against verbally passing on the pseud. Most people who hear it would search for "heebie jeebies", and no one's ever going to find you like that.
That's a very good point. (Even better if I'd spelled it "jeebie", I suppose, because then it would be impossible to locate in the sea of google.)