So, I go and read a bunch of blogs, just to get an idea of how other people go about all this nonsense and I come to a very strange realisation. What exactly is a blog?

Is it a diary or what?

I've found many, many people put stuff in their blogs as if it were their diary, something intensely personal that allows them to express themselves as they choose. To be honest about feelings they may have previously kept hidden for whatever reason.

To publish and be damned.

And damned they are.

In my previous entry, I didn't say anything to the author of that particular blog about the entry that unsettled me. I figured that it was something the author needed off their chest and they had chosen to do it there. They had not sent me a link, I had stumbled across it. It was probably never intended for my eyes. I chose to read it.

If you choose to read the writings of someone close to you, be prepared to find thing about you or about them that you may not have realised. It's voyerism, pure and simple. You are taking a peek inside them. You have no right to criticise what you find in there. YOU decided to look.

You get what you deserve.

I spent a long time discussing this over much red wine last Friday. I used the example of a lovely young friend I have who unloads a lot of emotional baggage on her blog. She knows her friends read it. Her friends know what she uses the blog for. Yet they have the gall to criticise her.

One of the girls I was discussing this with mentioned that an ex of hers had gone through the files on her computer and come across some explicit fiction she had written. He decided that it meant that she was having an affair. Nothing she could say could convince him otherwise. Where the hell did he get off reading her stuff and then coming to that ridiculous conclusion? And who was he to accuse her of anything? He chose to read it. He should have understood that he may have found something unexpected.

For me, a blog is a bit like going through someone's underwear drawer and pulling out that notebook they have hidden at the bottom. If a person chooses to reveal intimate details in it, respect that fact and do not criticise the author for it.

You choose to read it. If you don't like what you find about yourself in it, then shut up and deal. And if people you know criticise you for what you say in there, tell them it was their choice. They can fuck off.

This one's for Shira.