March 11th, 2008 How Personal Are You?

I was reading one of my daily websites (and one of my favorite, too) and the author, Mitch, mentioned something that caught my eye. The very first sentence, as a matter of fact! Surprise, surprise, an introductory sentence catching someone’s eye, eh?

“So I guess sometimes I should take the time to write about something non-web related.”

This might not seem enough to warrant a blog post or a huge topic in itself, but it got me to thinking about something I really never put my time into:

How personal should your blog be?

Is there any real rule as to what a blog should contain? There is no right or wrong answer, I suppose you can leave it up to the blogger. But say you always talk about techy or web design stuff and then you talk about your cousin’s pet running away from home on a new post.

Is that too personal without being too personal? What I’m trying to get at is, what is the right amount of life-blogging?

I would assume it has to do with me (and as I say me, I really mean the author) and you (you being the small but loyal little audience I have).

I really suck at getting my thoughts out in the open. So lemme put it in a different spin. Say again, you only talk about makeup on your blog. Then one day you talk about how your boyfriend / girlfriend dumped you and you want to get revenge.

Would that be considered too personal? Even if your blog is somewhat personal already? Is it too personal to talk about what you ate this morning when you usually write about what games you’re in love with?

It really depends. I know I don’t talk much about my life here. And it used to be quite the opposite. About two years ago I would talk about nothing but my life. Now I rarely talk about it. It’s not that I don’t have anything to say about my life, or things don’t happen to me. Crap happens to everyone.

But I just feel it’s too personal sometimes. No one wants to know about my troubles getting Simba my cat to pee in his litter box and not on the carpeted stairs. Or would you?

Some people go by the rule of “It’s my blog, I write about whatever I want”. I guess I just don’t feel that way anymore. I try not to keep it personal much nowadays. Not for any real reason other than that I believe my audience (points to about two or three people) wouldn’t give a poop about it.

But seriously, would you? If I blogged about say what I had during dinner and how Simba scratched me up real nice like ham on Christmas day would you care to read about that at all?

I don’t mean to be emo. But Mitch really brought up an interesting point. With one sentence? His beginning sentence, no less? Yes. I’ve seen posts developed out of less than that.

Tune in next time (or the next time after next time) as I talk about Making Love, another topic that’s been bugging me. Mind you, it won’t be about what you think it’ll be about. =P Pfft. Pervs.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 at 11:10 pm and is filed under Webbie. This entry has been tagged as blog, personal. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

3 Peaches to “How Personal Are You?”

1. Mitchell Says:
   March 12th, 2008 at 5:04 pm

   Glad that somehow I inspired this blog post XD

   I dunno if anything is too personal, it’s totally up to the discretion of the blogger. But I think (obviously) that since I blog mostly about internet stuff, there should be a more personal blog here and there, just to remind the reader that I’m not a robot (=

   And, on a totally not related note, I promise I will have Miiitch.com’s design up before spring break (NEXT WEEK YO) is over. I’m working most of the time, but I promise I’ll find a way. I hate having the default Wordpress theme XD

2. Christian Says:
   March 13th, 2008 at 1:50 pm

   When I used to blog everyday, I blogged about what happened in my day, and was fairly open with everything. I think I would be fairly open now, but then again I haven’t had a site in 2 years.

   I think you’ve gotten too personal if you feel uncomfortable posting it, but feel you have to because you feel like you have to blog, or give your readers something to blog about.

   So I don’t really think there is a “too personal”, as long as you’re comfortable letting people read it.

3. Hannah Says:
   March 14th, 2008 at 3:14 pm

   I’ve always kind of blogged about semi-personal things that happened in my life: family/friends, school, relationships, etc. I’m not much of a “techy” person, so I blog about what I know, and that’s myself, haha. I don’t update everyday, and I don’t update about SUPER personal topics, like many bloggers do. I think there should be a line drawn, somewhere…you can blog about your daily life if you want, but don’t give out too many details which could be a danger (such as the name and location of the school you go to). And also, nobody really wants to know details about your sex life or TMI posts about your bodily functions. That’s just TOO personal! haha…