The one problem I have with this site is that the more it grows, the less I can write. My life is essentially an open book, but I try to respect the privacy of my friends. If one friend does something funny but slightly embarassing, I don't write about it. But it's not just my friends. My sister reads the site, so I don't want to write about my dating life. The family of some friends read the site, so I don't want to write about certain adventures that they don't want their parents to know about. Further, if I write certain things, I worry that people will think that they're intentional manpulations. I was working out the terms of my employment with a friend who I'm going to be working with soon. I didn't write anything about it because I didn't want him to think that I was trying to use the site as some passive aggressive method of negotiating.
All in all, I probably only write about 25% of what I'd like to write here. My friends in real life end up hearing way more funny stories than readers of this site - and I think that's a shame.
In a way I think I should just write EVERYTHING. The first month could be a rough ride, but eventually people would get used to it and would probably stop being offended. Or maybe then my real life friends would become more reserved because they'd be concerned about what I might write.
I've thought about charging a monthly fee and manually checking every name who signed up, but it probably wouldn't take long before someone I knew got a friend I didn't know to open an account. Also, friends might become paranoid that I was writing about them because I wouldn't let them see the hidden site.
I even considered starting a new blog somewhere with a fake name. Somehow people are able to tell when it's me, though. I used to put a bunch of personal ads on Craigslist. Each one was a hail Mary - no real expectation of meeting someone great through it, but still worth the glimmer of hope it provided. I would write very different types of ads - funny ones, demanding ones, tame ones. Somehow people always knew that I had written them. They wouldn't even question it.
"How's your new ad going?"
They all claimed that it was obvious that it was me, even though I'd change my age and leave out any identifying characteristics.
The good news is that despite self censoring, I still have a lot of things to write about. I still wish that there was a good solution to the problem so that I could write about more of my stories.
EDIT: Welcome, StumbleUpon users! Thanks for checking out my site.
A while back someone e-mailed me and asked me how I had so many interesting experiences in my life. I meant to write him back, but couldn't find the e-mail.
First of all, what constitutes an interesting life? Do we care if OTHER people think it's interesting? Do we care if WE think it's interesting? Does it just have to be different?
Hey Sebastian,
Just a quick thought. Your website has so many visitors, and I bet you could make a lot of money putting some ads on it. But I kind of admire that you don't. I understand people putting ads on their websites, because it is business and an easy way to make money can be quite nice. However, I can't help but feel that people not putting ads are more... how should I put it... I often view them as superior in an intangible sense. I'm struggling to grasp in which. Attitude, pride, standards, noble? Hmm.
With your websites and ads, I wondered why you don't put up any. You don't need the money? Or is it from some kind of internal stance, and you wouldn't put any in either way? By the way, reading your website feels, to me, nice independent of content cause no ads are there to annoy me. These days it seems you can't read many good blogs without drowning in ads.
My blog doesn't generate enough constant traffic to make me consider adding any, but... I wonder, would I? I don't know. It's like the pride matter, though not the same.
Ps. I liked your absurdity post
