Principles

Okay -- Remember how yesterday I said that I was pondering an issue, and I wasn't done?

Well, I'm still not done.

I'm picking up, however, on a trend within myself.

Last Fall and Winter, I was wrestling with similar situations (wherein blogging involved discussing personal situations that would be anonymous to most, but would probably be likely to identify individuals to those readers who are involved very closely in my life), and I think that was the point that my blogging slowed down to a crawl.

In this corner -- dressed in red tights with yellow lightning flash blazing across the chest/boob area -- Carol's personal emotional upheaval.

In this corner -- donned in a dignified toga of blazing white -- Carol's principles.

I suppose my principles must be winning -- I simply cannot bring myself to "name names". Not that I would have blogged it that way -- I would have simply said "There was a person today . . . " or something equally discreet and anonymous -- but I think it's probable that someone out there who reads this blog could probably have identified the "person" I was talking about -- perhaps even the person I was blogging about.

And I just haven't felt comfortable with that.

I'm wondering if that's a handicap to my revelation, or a help to my evolution. On the one hand, it has left me with my finger poised over the "post" button many times -- maybe from cowardice and lack of commitment. On the other hand, it has caused me to re-think what I had written and consider whether I had really penetrated to the principalic whole of the situation that I was writing about.

I'm still pondering and considering and wrestling with the same issue I was yesterday, but blogging about it at this point seems somewhat premature.

Somehow I think that this issue is intimately attached to the questions of "why am I writing this" and "who am I writing this for" -- questions I haven't even begun to answer for myself, and questions that many bloggers will tell you are strictly verbotten -- one of the maxims I have read is "never blog about blogging".

But dammit -- this is a different format, as far as I'm concerned. A book that is widely published (and hopefully, widely read) has been through the hands of several, if not dozens, of editors -- but a blog has all the immediacy of casual conversation -- with all the permanancy of print.

So I am, once again, posting to keep my promise to myself, and choosing to percolate this issue another 24 hours.

Tonight the wind is blowing and I'm tired but not sleepy.

I wonder if, when I finally get this particular issue gestated and blog about it, you'll think "Sheesh! Was that all?!"