Thank you for everyone who asked questions! I had such a ball reading each comment as it came in, and I hope to make this a regular part of the blog. I’ll be dividing these into a couple of posts, roughly by topic, to keep each post from being too long.

Dearest AAL,  

I am struggling with what to share on my blog. I have become totally paranoid about being found online – work is contentious enough as it is, and writing about my frustrations with opposing counsel or judges would make everything worse in a hurry. Also, pretty sure I’m not allowed to talk about Fight Club in any but the vaguest of terms.

I also worry that talking about my feelings and showing vulnerability online could be used against me (I know, paranoid) and talking about my marriage just seems unfair.

The thing is, I need someone to talk to and our online community is the best support I’ve got on a day-to-day basis. I know this has been a concern of yours in the past. How does a young professional draw the line between sharing and oversharing in a field as aggressive as ours? Should I just stick to talking about crafting and my kid and leave the rest of my feelings to be handled by strong booze and power lifting?
Sincerely,
D

 

Dearest D,

Once upon a time, I blogged under my real name and looked down on people who adopted pseudonyms online. I’d had a huge (if niche) web presence since the mid-1990s, all under my real name. On my blog, I posted pictures of my child, anecdotes of my very dysfunctional family (who read the blog and would be angry at me for months for posting about the awful things they did, yet strangely felt no guilt about their behavior), and my fears and hopes and all of that. (I never blogged about my husband without his permission, and I could never blog about my cases because they were too sensitive and/or high profile.)

And then one day, I looked at my stats and saw that opposing counsel in my most contentious case was reading my blog.

That was that. A few months later, I started this blog — pseudonymously. I still censor a lot of what I say about my practice (even though it’s been years since I worked on those cases) and my family (our history is unique and easily identifiable to certain people).

My suggestion to you is to either start a new blog, further obscuring your identity — or to move to Twitter (or both).

Twitter. Really. I never thought I’d like Twitter. As it turns out, it made me a better writer (cutting out extra words) and it made me a lot of friends.

Also, Twitter is where I’m more inclined to share little bits and pieces of my weird life. I read somewhere that “Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers, but Facebook is where you lie to your friends.” Although I don’t know if that’s true, it is more interactive than a blog (the vast majority of blog readers never comment, which is unfortunate for those of us who blog) and no matter what time of day or night, you’ll be able to have conversations with friends and followers.