For Whom the Tale Was Written
Everyone who has ever written a diary/journal-like blogpost on the internet must have grappled with this question at one point: how would you feel if someone you know in real life reads your blog? Some would immediately recoil in horror, the mere thought alone a strong deterrent never to visit personal topics. Some would probably shrug. Some would perhaps question the merit of keeping private stories publicly in the first place. To blog can sound like a cacophony of counterpoints, no?
But in this sea of complete strangers we can sometimes find solace we don't readily find around us, a sense of detachment, an air of freedom to tell something without having to process or anticipate reactions from the people we care about. I find this true whether or not you use a pseudonym. In my case, I never pretend anonymity. Requiem is a pseudonym, but it's my main pseudonym. I use it to work on commissions, receive credits for my involvement in a project, and anyone nosy enough could find my legal name in just two clicks. I never shouted the blog's existence from a rooftop, but it's prominently linked wherever I keep a creative profile.
When I was young, my mother ruined the fun out of keeping a diary by reading mine and getting upset that I was upset about it. Feeling dismayed and deeply betrayed, I tucked the pretty little thing back in its box, a birthday present from my uncle I initially liked very much. I learned that my mom never learnt the concept of privacy, that for her whatever owned by a family member (especially a child's) was free game for everyone to peruse. I stopped keeping anything of the sort until I moved away for college. In the interim, I wrote zines, I wrote fictions and essays, I never wrote about daily lives and personal observations.
I do put some into words, disguised under seven layers of metaphors and carefully blended with heavy dose of editing and present them as work of fictions under a pseudonym for good measure.
After college, I no longer had to censor my thoughts. I filled notebooks after notebooks with a jumble of poetry, stories, angst, and anger. However, when I began to write online, as a kid growing up pre-internet era I chose not to publish anything I would regret on the internet. My blogposts have been relatively benign, not to mention generally oblique. My approach is nonfiction fiction, in the sense that almost everything I relate in my writings is true, but sometimes I substitute descriptions that might point to an individual or composite events/characters as I see fit. I do not fear real life repercussions, but I would rather not cause misunderstanding should such problem might arise.
That's a long-winded way to say that I don't mind if someone from my life reads this. If they do, chances are they find me through avenues where I express myself in ways I'm comfortable with and I could care less. It can be awkward if they're part of the anecdotes I fudge around here and there, but if they make a big deal out of something I write here then they aren't likely to be someone I'm very close to anyway. If they object to the term I use to refer to them or a specific portrayal, I would be happy to oblige to their preferences wherever I could.
By and large however, I don't think it would affect me very much. I try to avoid excessive individual references in my posts (and definitely no location or private information), usually preferring to focus on generalized takeaways and my random musings. This is after all, my soapbox, albeit one I would hope be the tiniest bit useful for someone.