I try to be honest with what I share on my blog. At least, I make a conscious effort not to be dishonest.

I think there are different degrees of honesty. There's honest as in, you're not currently telling a lie. This applies to my blog. Everything I write about is true.

Then, there's gross honest, like, oh, my tampon fell out when I was running down the sidewalk, or I accidentally pooped the bed* - TMI-style honesty. I share a little bit of that. I think being a beast makes you easier to relate to. But there's less and less of the gag-inducing 'omg, she's one nasty biatch' stuff being posted here the more people I know "in real life" are reading my blog.

And then there's the real nitty-gritty. The kind of honesty that isn't pretty, that maybe makes people uncomfortable. The kind of posts that can walk a fine line between introspective and woe-is-me, Debbie Downer epics you skim over in your Google reader; written by some authors, they can make your heart go out to someone you've never met.

Given the complete lack of anonymity and people who know me in real life that pop in from time to time, I can't see myself getting too serious honest, which saddens me a bit. But then, do you really want to read about the time this happened or that happened or why I feel the way I do about a sensitive topic? Do I really want to open myself up for those debates?

Would it be different if nobody knew who I was? Definitely. I have a lot of stuff I'd love to someday share and see what comes back, but for now, you're getting YouTube videos of kids lipsyncing in their rooms and my Christmas lists and vacation snapshots. There are things that I'm just not totally ready to share...things that I'm not convinced a blog is the best forum to share. I guess that's why I've got a paper journal.

*Neither of these scenarios have happened to me but I'm sure they've HAPPENED. If they did happen to me, I might blog about them. Probably not.