Dealing With Insecurities About Past, Present, and Future Posts

The internet can be a great place to share ideas and talk about interests. It can also become a problem if someone says something extremely insensitive, inconsiderate, and downright rude and disrespectful. The openness of ideas, thoughts, and opinions on the internet is something I enjoy as a blogger, but when I started blogging on my first blog almost ten years ago, I was terrified I would say something that people would be offended by. When I started this blog, I was terrified again because I didn’t have confidence in myself and my opinions.

In order to come out of my shell, many people I know, including doctors that took care of me during my antibiotic resistant infection, suggested blogging. To expose myself in person terrified me, but to do it online where there can be people who seem to browse the internet with the sole intention to find and harass someone was my worst nightmare. Still, I did it and I’m doing it to this day.

Although I’m better about being open online and talking about my life and what is going on in it, I still don’t want to reveal a lot about myself out of fear of the Internet’s judgement. The most recent worry and fear I have towards my posts rose up when I had a talk with my doctors a few weeks ago about Covid-19. They know I wrote a post about Covid-19 in March after a run in with a rude and inconsiderate person at Target. After talking about my worries about talking about Covid-19 on my blog, which is rooted in my fear of sending out the wrong information and causing a great misunderstanding to anyone who reads anything I write, they told me not to worry about it.

I would love to talk about my thoughts on Covid-19, but I held back because of my fear. My doctors believed I would talk about Covid-19 because this is a lifestyle blog and I talk about anything lifestyle oriented, but I didn’t because of my personal fear of revealing too much information about my health problems and the harsh judgement and criticism that I would experience from it. I always kept my diagnosis to myself and never talked about it opening online until the past year or so, (If I’m remembering correctly) but I did mention that I was ill and I was limited in how I lived my life, what I could do, and anything else that happens to be affected by my illness. I was always afraid I will be judged harshly because I never disclosed my diagnosis online. Usually readers of my first blog and on other social media websites didn’t really care because they figured I had a chronic illness (Which is true) but didn’t want to talk about it for privacy reasons. (Also true) Others didn’t think that way and, much to my shock, it was friends I had at that time.

Those friends believed it was their responsibility to be a good friend to keep me honest online and discuss anything personal online because, in their view, I’m very comfortable talking openly about anything that happens in my life. To this day I have no idea where their idea come from, but I think it’s because having a blog means I need to talk at length about anything I need to have a post topic. If they knew me as much as they believed they did, they would know that I hate oversharing and if I don’t have something to talk about, I’ll think of something that isn’t private and can talk about at length. Because of this, when they became critical of my blogging and that I should disclose my diagnosis online shocked me.

Ever since then my confidence in my ability to blog (And write in general) was shaken. It was until I began to heal from my infection (And severed ties with them completely) that I started to feel confidence in my ability to blog slowly return. I still have a ways to go, but I’m doing better.

The problem is when I reread the posts they didn’t like, there really wasn’t very much wrong with what I said. I believe they wanted me to talk more openly about myself and anything I want to keep offline, not for my own good but for their own entertainment. They had ideas for my blog and believed I should follow their instructions without argument. That’s not what friendships are about. They are not about controlling and micromanaging someone else’s life to benefit their own when they are at their weakest. Real friends are supportive and try their best to be a good advisor and councilor for their friend.

I’m very disappointed in those ex friends and their attempts to shame me because I wanted to blog for fun and to talk about something I enjoy online. I’m very ashamed that I was friends with them because, to this day, I often wonder what my life would be like if I didn’t try to form friendships with them. Although I know I would put my effort into my friendships with my current friends back then, I also wouldn’t have wisdom and knowledge about how to deal with people who use friendships as a way to control someone they want to control. I also wouldn’t know how serious it is to be careful what to talk about online and how past posts can be used to harass and troll someone because someone doesn’t like them and tried to blow something they said out of proportion. I know how to deal with the “haters” and the “trolls” both offline and online. I’m grateful I have that experience and hope it will serve me well in the future, no matter if it’s in a blog post or somewhere else.

Well, that’s all for now! Thank you for reading!