Back in 84, if you wanted to call someone, you looked them up in the phone book and then used an old phone with a dial – no touch pad. God help you if you had an area code and you messed up – it took a while to redial. Nowadays, you look up a persons address and phone number based upon their city. Then you plug that into another website, and find their business and possibly compensation. Last, you look up their LinkedIN, and find all their coworkers.
How times have changed.
I have several blogs: a running journal where this site was born, a professional portfolio, a blog offering editing services, my “dumb ideas” site, and this one. My baby is the portfolio site: I post a link to it for my business contacts, my applications, on my resume and cover letters as I attempt to get another full-time engineering job. The site has a counter and once a week, when I wake up to go to my part-time job, I look on my phone’s email, and I get a message telling me people have looked at my portfolio. Generally they are professionals or occasionally an errant search, but (and this is unfortunate) someone subscribed to it, and occasionally, I get a hit from the subscription service.
I know who this person is, and haven’t really talked to them in about 14 years this thanksgiving.
The accessibility that comes with life today can be rife with pitfalls such as this; I don’t want that person to see my site, but more importantly I don’t want to get my hopes up, just to see that it is another DUM(B)my hit.
What’s scary is that this can happen at anytime… if they know your name and the city where you live, they can pay someone to get your address and then send you mail.
Let’s be honest. I occasionally do research work for my job. I look up people’s addresses, home value, business information, and occasionally determine publicly disclosed compensation. The only caveat is that these people contacted my employer – just didn’t provide 100% of their info; I just fill in the dots, and I never pay.
As far as blogs go, I think they provide an outlet for thoughts and a place to hone writing. Bill Simmons, ESPN’s The Sports Guy, for example, started sports writing on what could be considered a precursor to blogs. Now he is an accomplished artist, columnist, sports authority, screen writer, and producer. He found his voice on the web – aren’t we all?
That being said, I appreciate readers, followers, and commenter. I like the independent readers as well as repeat readers – if no one is reading, why am I writing (I will answer that in another post)? Followers let me know that people actively read my content, and they want my content delivered. Commenters are the best as they help me to improve. My friend, if you will, is none of the above. I fear that I am delivered to an inbox daily, and at the end of the day, there is some connection felt on the other end whereby I am known better, and the two of us are closer.
Let’s be honest – I am a bitter, depressed, disillusioned young man – my friend cannot relate!
Just let this be a cautionary tale… if you allow your blog to be ‘open,’ you may let a little crazy in.
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