The price of fame
I won't lie to you -- fame is enticing. Part of the thing that tickles me the most about my job is that random people actually come up to me and say they recognize me. It creeps me out too, no doubt, but there's a part of me that likes that sort of recognition.
Yet, I see what fame does to my friends who are more well-known than I am, and I flinch. They get scrutinized and criticized a lot more than I do, and they have a lot more enemies (real and imagined). Internet fame is still somewhat ghetto, but it's enough to earn you lots of unwanted attention. Imagine Usenet, but in real life.
What I'm the most wary about is the ever-creeping urge to censor myself. Will I no longer be able to blog about my personal thoughts like this? Will I have to make all my Flickr photos friends-only? Even now, Vox has become my area of seclusion and retreat, and yet I know that this too will soon be discovered. Where else can I vent and rant and rave about the tiny injustices that occur in my life? Am I to give up the catharsis that is the blogging experience? I've been blogging my thoughts since 2001. Giving it up would be akin to cutting off my left arm.
I know what you're thinking -- talk to friends, family, talk to someone in person, over the phone. I'm sorry, but that's not enough. With people, I put on masks. With my computer, I take them off. It is the most freeing thing in the world to be able to express one's thoughts without masks. That's simply the way it is with me and blogging; that's the beauty of it. I suppose I could go back to the world of personal journal writing, confining my thoughts to the pages of a Moleskine journal. But I miss the interaction that is inherent with blogging as well.
One of these days I'll get tired of this. I'll get tired of wearing my heart on my sleeve, and I'll get tired of saying what I feel. One of these days I'll be discovered as a thin-skinned bleeding heart who cares too much about what people think. And then it'll happen. I'll stop blogging. I'll stop putting content out there. I'll stop documenting my life.
Only to start up again a week later. I'm such a sad individual.
Comments
that's exactly how I feel also, hard to describe but you took the words right out of my mouth.
I have trouble with it too, and sometimes I get frustrated and unhappy that I can talk about all of the things I used to be able to. My friends and family sometimes get upset if I talk about them on my site! It's weird.