So I was at work the other day, sweeping the floor or some shit and looking out the windows at the park across the street that was filled with people doing a ton of not-at-work-hahaha shit that I wished I was doing, when one of my coworkers snapped me out of my daydream of lounging on plush grass underneath the shade of a tree and said, “Hey, I read your blog today.”

“Oh? What did you read?”

“The one about the gay things straight guys should do. It was pretty funny, I thought it was an article at first.”

“…oh,” I was surprised and flattered, though I didn’t know why – my blog is linked to my facebook account and I’ve never really kept it a secret. Still, I got an odd feeling from knowing my coworker had read my blog. Not a bad feeling, just odd. I stored it away as a singular incident.

Then later that evening, as I was having a drink with another group of coworkers at a block party, I was in the middle of subtly checking out one of the few men that I work with when another coworker confessed that she had read my blog. Well, one post from it.

“Which one did you read?”

“I don’t know, something about a Pussy Rest or something. I didn’t finish it.”

Again that odd feeling.

And, just now, as I was logging out of facebook, I noticed that my last blog entry had been “liked” by two people: my best friend from Pittsburgh, and one of my cousins. My favorite cousin, but still a family member that I hadn’t really spoken to at length in a while. And at first it didn’t really bother me that she had read (and liked) my blog entry about the gay things straight men should do…

…until I remembered that it had a vague reference to me getting pubic hair stuck in my teeth.

And I’m not so sure about how I feel about that. That odd feeling came roaring back, and I wondered if it was this feeling that keeps a lot of bloggers I follow from tying their blogs to their real identities:  the odd, exposed, almost embarrassed twinge in the back of your mind when something you usually keep separated from your real life is then reflected back at you by your real life.

My blog is definitely a place where I can be a lot more honest about and explorative of my emotions. It’s a place where I can not only be forthcoming with the things I’ve done, but where I can get feedback from people who don’t know me and who I’ll most likely never meet. Having a blog is a lot like having a livejournal, only to have a blog is to more overtly push for an audience. Specifically, an anonymous audience. It’s a more exhibitionist thing to blog, I feel, than it is to livejournal – which is why I never minded when friends and family visited my livejournal, and why I’m now having this feeling at the thought of real world figures of my life encountering this part of me.

I would have never written about a hot guy’s pubic hair getting anywhere near my teeth on my livejournal.

But I think, as odd as this feeling is, that it’s necessary. I don’t think I’m going to change the way I blog, what I blog about, and how openly I present it for anyone to read. I made a promise to myself a while back that I would become a more open person, that I wouldn’t be so borderline ashamed about some of the things I’ve done, my talents, or things that I’m into (sexual, dorky or otherwise).  Maybe I luck out in the sense that there’s nothing in my life right now that is truly keeping me from tying my identity to a website where I blog about things that aren’t exactly PC (I’m in no danger of losing my job over YoBrando), but as of now I see my blog as an exercise in honesty. A avenue by which I can present myself to the world – friends, family, and coworkers included.