reading this blog (a note about interpretation)

This blog is an abandoned class project that I later took up again in a very different way as part of a "literary" project with 4 of my close girlfriends.

Those girlfriends were my only intended and known audience till recently, when I became aware that there is a wider readership for this blog.

No matter who is reading, though, I prefer to keep the blog exactly as it is while addressing a few concerns about anonymity and interpretation.

1) Anonymity.
I'm an open kind of human being--there is nothing I've written here that I would hesitate to say (or haven't said) in my own office.

However, my friends and colleagues are also represented on this blog and they do deserve to have some control over how they are represented to the newer wider audience.

Therfore, I am going to change the names of all actual people to Name Deleted. That should be an interesting literary move since there will now be only 2 characters in the blog: me and Name Deleted.

As I forget who actually said what, peoples' identities will get blurred together and I get to look at the broader human themes in peoples' relationships. Cool.

2. Interpretation.

As part of a literary project, the genre of this blog is an electronic memoir.

A memoir is a form of literary autobiography: in a memoir, you take things that happened to you as the inital source for writing, but you add elements of fictional writing such as merging or synthesizing actual events and characters, dramatic tension and fantasy: you represent the spirit and resonance of what happened, not the bare facts. There is a substantial tradition of memoir blogging on the web.

With my closer friends, I have a lot of chances to talk directly about what actually happened vs. what is "literary" fantasy. In fact, posts are often inspired by conversations with them:

"Awww, I WISH I/he/they had said/done that! It would be soooo funny. I'll write it that way on my blog".

But for a wider audience, I don't always have that chance. If you recognize yourself as Name Deleted and you are thinking, "wait a minute, it didn't go exactly like that", that's perfectly normal in literary autobiography.

But, if you are OFFENDED by the representation of you on this blog, be sure to let me know and we'll talk through some possible changes--especially if you think you could be identifiable to a wider audience.