Thursday, June 17, 2004

The Dilemma of Owning Up

I haven't told anyone close to me about this blog yet.  There are a couple of reasons for that.  The first and probably most compelling is that a lot of what I've put up, I've put up during business hours at a time when my work life is insanely busy.  I've had to work late several evenings -- last night until 8:30 p.m. and there was one evening last week when I worked until after 1 a.m.  While my husband is supportive of me, he's not supportive of long hours that cut into our time together -- it is, in fact, another way he is supportive of me.  And I like that about him.

I'm not claiming the hours I work on the blog as billable, so I don't feel dishonest in that respect, or otherwise as though I am cheating my employers.  However, I worry that I'm cheating my husband of time at home by not being optimally efficient during working hours.  That's one reason I haven't told anyone.  He is the first person I would tell and I'm not quite ready to break that news yet.  It doesn't take as long as it seems like it might, but it definitely does cut into my productivity during work hours by at least 1-2 hours each day (so far). 

I justify it to myself by knowing that I need to be writing. My husband would understand this.  But I'm confident that once he does see this for the first time, he'll still not be happy with me for taking work hours to do it.  And while on one hand I appreciate the fairness of that complaint, I also don't know when else I would be doing it. So. Even writing about it now makes me nervous.

The second reason is that I really want to feel free to explore whatever interests me with this blog.  And generally speaking that's going to be spiritual/religious stuff or political stuff, and/or the nexus of the two.  (Though plainly, sometimes it will be something else altogether.)  I really don't know how open to my faith-based ramblings and political diatribes my friends would be in general.  Everyone would recognize at least one aspect of me, but I have very few friends who are attuned to or fully aware of both. And, ironically, I believe that's because many of them would find "the other part" alienating. 

Perhaps that's a part of the motivation I hadn't considered until just now.  To find a community, somehow, of people who do not think they know the answers about what God is or wants of us, but who care anyway, and who are searching for answers nonetheless --- AND who, at the least, suspect the answers are not to honor wealth above all, to justify war or war-mongering for access to other countries' natural resources, and/or to foist America's consumer culture on all of the world, much less perpetuate it even within our own borders.  This is, perhaps, a crazy way to seek you.  Are you out there?