Being Real
I am in the middle of reading Wil Wheaton’s ‘Just a Geek’. It’s a really great, easy read. It’s entertaining, it’s emotional, and it’s funny. One of the things Wheaton struggles with in learning to write is to be open, to not hide behind the voices in his head that tell him he can’t be perfectly honest on the internet. The voices that tell him to put on a strong face, to be non-confrontational, and upbeat, even when he’s feeling at his lowest.
There is so much truth in this struggle. Where do you draw the line between reveling too much and sounding like you’re holding too much in? How much of yourself do you let out to let people know about the real you, and how much do you hold in to prevent the internet’s hostile and anonymous underworld of scum from attacking everything you hold dear.
For Wheaton, the answer eventually came that he was able to tell the internet scum to go f*** themselves and troll somewhere else. And if you follow his internet presence at all, you know that is something he still does to this day.
Do you have the courage to do that? Do I? I hardly even tell my facebook friends I have a blog. What if they visit once and never come to read again? Only my closest friends really know this place exists. I want to write more, but if I’m afraid to tell anyone it’s here, who am I writing for? I might as well just keep a journal.