Still Writing, Still Wondering

Almost twenty-one years ago, not long after I started this blog, I wrote an entry called “First Do No Harm” (January 2006). I was trying to suss out the various ethical dilemmas of writing publicly about my life when other people inevitably made appearances. Could I be honest about my experience while respecting their privacy and feelings? At the time, I had been blogging for about two months. Apparently, I thought I should get this settled from the git-go. Two decades later, I’m still struggling with the same issues. It seems life is like that.

In that essay, I described this blog as a form of therapy. Specifically, I said that “I write because it provides an outlet for thoughts and emotions I don’t have any other place for.” That remains true. I often write to describe what has happened, what meaning I have made of it, and why some seemingly small event has stayed with me. But publishing adds something to that process. A private journal doesn’t have readers. This blog does, although, as I observed in “The Observer Effect,” distinguishing a small number of others’ eyeballs from my own visits and wandering bots can be a challenge. Still, a tiny audience is still an audience, and sometimes the people I write about are among those paying attention.

Knowing that someone might be reading also raises questions about how I present myself. My recent discussion of the Elizabeth Holmes documentary brought me back to the subject of impression management: how people influence what others think of them. I examined the choices made by people on screen and behind the camera. Here, of course, I get to make those choices myself. I decide where a story begins, which details matter, and when you have heard enough. Even when I portray myself somewhat negatively, I get to choose exactly how much to reveal. Ideally, I write enough to make an entertaining paragraph without making myself look entirely hopeless.

Those choices concern more than the image I present, though. They also shape the account itself. Does that make me an unreliable narrator? Earlier this year, in “The Observer Is Always in the Story,” I wrote about questions raised by Lauren Kessler’s reflections on memoir. My own training in qualitative research had long since persuaded me that I could not stand outside an experience as a detached observer. I always brought my history, assumptions, and feelings along. Subjectivity itself didn’t trouble me; memory was another matter. What I remember deserves checking where possible, while what I make of it inevitably comes through the filters of my life. Does some “objective reality” exist beyond our accounts? Perhaps, but I have no place to stand from which I can describe it without bringing myself along. What I can do is make my perspective visible and remain willing to reconsider it. I’m an actor in the story, even as I’m trying to make sense of it all.

Acknowledging my perspective doesn’t settle what happens when I publish an account involving someone else. That brings me back to the question of harm. I can change a name, omit a location, and remove identifying personal details in an attempt to provide some degree of anonymity. Those are useful precautions, but the person I’ve written about may still recognize themselves and feel exposed or unfairly portrayed. I sometimes struggle to grasp such an objection when I believe I have simply described my own experience. Still, my difficulty understanding that person’s response doesn’t make the objection go away. Nor does calling the writing therapeutic resolve what publishing it might cost someone else.

This was precisely the difficulty I put to a colleague back in 2006. He offered what he called a “communitarian, dialogical reality,” adding, “put that in your blog and float it.” Well, here I am, floating it again, some twenty-one years later. His point was that privacy is negotiated, and that writers have to decide what they can live with when someone’s feelings get hurt. I still find that useful, although “what I can live with” now gives me pause. It’s possible to become quite comfortable with a decision when I’m the one making it. If privacy is negotiated, surely that involves some willingness to hear an objection, even when I don’t agree with it. The other person’s response becomes part of what I need to consider.

Ok, so where does that leave me? I want to keep telling stories about my life, including the people who have mattered in it. I also want to cause as little pain as I can. I know I don’t have a rule to follow, a line to draw, that will reliably accomplish both. Perhaps the useful questions are fairly ordinary ones: Is this detail necessary? Am I describing what happened, or assigning a motive? Would waiting change what I want to say? And does everything that helps me to write need to be published? When I started blogging, I wanted somewhere to put my feelings. I still do. At present, I’m giving more deliberate thought to which ones need an audience.

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Soundtrack Suggestion

Should I stay, or should I go now?
Should I stay, or should I go now?
If I go, there will be trouble
And if I stay, it will be double
So come on and let me know

(“Should I Stay or Should I Go” — The Clash)

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