The conundrum of a blog

I was recently expressing to a friend my hesitancy to recruit a readership for this blog from amongst my friends and family. I do want a readership, but I don't know that I want to know my readership, or have them truly know me, at the end of the day. It becomes a matter of how brutally honest I am comfortable in being with my blog. My friend fleshed it out for me as follows:

I think I understand your publishing reticence. It make sense if you are going to write a blog you invest legitimate time and thought into writing. After all traditionally in publishing, you have a vague sense of reaching an audience, but a knowledge that your friends and family constitute a minority in that audience. Blogs, the modern-day vanity press, launch from family and friends outward.

I think too, we invest a considerable amount of time portraying ourselves to our friends in person. The danger in a blog is sending a conflicting message. You can't realistically enter a writing alter-ego when you know that all your readers are saying to themselves, "ah, this is all well and good, but Dave is thusly." Or worse that people that know you think you are duplicitous when you might actually be complex enough to read one way in blogdom and another way in conversation.

Writing is stilted honesty, it is hard to be honest, especially to people that know you. It is hard to be honest when people don't know where the honesty is (tone, content, idiom, thought...) and jump to their own conclusions. If you don't know your audience personally, things go more easily.

All this is not to say that I intend to be mischievously dishonest in my blog, on the contrary, I look forward to the challenge that it will provide me with to be honest and kind in that which I write.

A challenge to be careful with my words.

In other news...spent the weekend relaxing and helping Matt unpack in his new place. About time he moved to Hoboken. Saturday I drove the roommate to the airport in the morning then lazed while waiting for the dishwasher repairman to show up and fix the stupid thing. I'm pretty sure I could have done it myself, in less time, too. Here's the funny part - we had a guy come out and look at it two weeks ago. He only needed a few minutes looking at it to be able to tell me, with absolute certainty, that we needed a new motor. Sears sends the motor, we call them when it arrives, they schedule the guy to come again to install it (the part I could have done myself). Well, its a new guy this time. He tinkers with the broken machine for a while, then gets on the phone. The following ensues:

"Yah Joseph, is Ron. Listen, I looking at dishwasher, you know, one in Hoboken, you say need new motor?"

"..." (and I'm wondering if Joseph, on the other end of the line, even remembers our dishwasher)

"Yeah...well...I wondering...why you think needs new motor?"

I didn't bother listening to the rest of the phone call. Point is the roommate got a deal - you pay a flat $190 and they guarantee to repair the problem and cover it for a couple years or something like that. So it wasn't like the motor or extra labor cost us extra. Lucky for them. He put the new one in and left.

Helped Matt unpack that afternoon, Sunday I decided to take a morning off from the weekly trek to the East Side service, and furtively sought to not labor on the Sabbath. Helped Matt hang some pictures. Evening service. Home. Eat. Bed.

This weekend should be fun, Matt and I are headed to conquer the mighty summer rivers of Virginia via canoe. There will also be beer, and volleyball, and grilled flesh, and fireworks. I love this weekend.