Baby steps…

I've made a decision, of sorts.

I want to be less secretive about this blog. Take a few steps towards "outing" myself.

I don't exactly want to announce to all and sundry that I write it. Or connect it to my real name. Or even post pictures with my face in them...

But I do want to stop hiding.

A few of my close friends, some of which are mentioned here, already knew I was doing this from the very beginning, but this past week I've told the other people I write about, too. Mostly to see whether or not they had a problem with me writing about them, even though I was using code names and trying my best not to give out too much information about them.

So far, the people I've told have all reacted very positively, which is encouraging.

My biggest worry was telling J. I knew I'd have to tell him eventually. It wasn't so much his reaction to the sexual stuff that I was worried about (well, except for the HNTs...), but I was worried that he would think less of me after reading this. Almost everything about me is all laid out here, in this blog... all my flaws, insecurities, obsessions, and weirdnesses.

Right now, J is at home dealing with some family troubles. I had planned on telling him a little while after he came back, since that would probably be a better time, and this is the kind of thing that I wanted to tell him in person. But I ended up telling him sooner than I expected - last night, in fact, over IM. We started talking about skeletons-in-the-closet and I made a passing comment about probably having more than him, and obviously that piqued his curiosity. So I said, "well, I have this blog..."

"Yes," he said, "I've seen it, it's on your facebook profile."

"No, not that one." i.e. my vanilla blog that I barely use. "This one is different..."

"Oh, like [person's] blog?" [Person] being a mutual friend who also has a sexblog.

I said yes. He took it extremely well. Maybe I was being overly worried about the whole thing. He didn't seem shocked, surprised, disgusted, or anything. Maybe it helped that he already knew someone who was doing the same thing as me. Or maybe he was just hiding his feelings. I'm not sure. But anyway, I expressed that I was worried about him reading it and learning about all of my flaws, and he said something very surprising to me... he told me that I didn't have to show him the blog if I didn't want to.

It was a big relief. I had wanted to show him because I felt that this was something a significant other should know about me. But he said he was happy enough learning about me by talking and spending time with me.

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So, yeah. If any of my friends learn that I blog via word-of-mouth, or see me carrying a big package full of sex toys to review and ask me what it is, or anything, I'm going to be candid with them.

I'm not sure how all this is going to play out. It might blow up in my face. In that case, I can always unplug and start anew.

I might have to write a bit less about my personal life, but I wanted to move on to other things anyway - writing quality erotica and addressing more issues related to gender and sexuality that are less centered around me. I want to write about bigger things besides myself.

I feel that writing anonymously or secretively can only go so far... if I want my writing about sex or interest in gender & sexuality to be a bigger part of my life, I think that I can only do that by, to some extent, abandoning the safety blanket of anonymity. For a year, it's provided me with a secure refuge to explore sensitive topics, but I think that I'm confident enough now to be expressive in a more open way.

It's a scary step. And an exciting one. We'll see where it takes me.

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Also: I was having a twitter conversation about this, and Maymay ended up joining in since me and my friend were discussing him as somebody who was an "out" sexblogger. He eventually wrote a very interesting post about how to manage your internet persona. Not much of it is applicable to me, since I don't ever intend to connect my real name with this blog, but he definitely puts forward a lot of good points about why it might be beneficial to be out and have greater control over your online image.

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