Feeling a Need to Further Ellaborate

My earlier vague comments about internet situations were so vague and I'm needing an opportunity to vent a little.

Adding the internet to our lives as a society, has certainly opened us up for many challenging situations. I think that the bottom line is that we somehow convince ourselves that when we are posting something on the internet, we're alone. We always believe "nobody is going to find out."

Our kids have been caught with this again and again when it comes to being online, which is why we have completely taken internet away from our children at home. Of course, we realize that they can get online at a friend's house (I'm sure, in fact that at this moment Salinda is online ... but she can't get on with her old sign-on name because I changed her password). I have been able to look at my kids email, read their IM conversations, find things they have posted on My Space, etc.,

When I was younger, I was the "integrity" freak. You can ask any of the students that I worked with at the former Bartlesville Wesleyan College because it was my annual chapel speech topic every year for four years. My point was this: if you have integrity, what you say, what you do, and what you think will all correspond.

Character, after all, is who you are when nobody is looking.

And you can truly see character when you read what people post online when they think it is private. There have been times when I would not be proud to have an IM conversation to a friend, a coworker, or a family member read by another person. There are moments, when i have to remind myself when blogging, to be careful because as I have discovered over time, people from our church, the district superintendent, and my next door neighbor all were reading the blog unbeknownst to me.

But the difference between me and my children is that I do not have anything to hide. The stuff that I write sometimes might not always demonstrate good self-control. Once and a while it might border on unkind. I might not always exercise discretion. But I don't have a secret life that I am only talking about online. I have no hidden pieces of me. If you knew me in person you would realize that I'm the same, fallable, lacking discretion, human being that you see in print.

When something is funny, it's going to get blogged, even if might be borderline inappropriate or offensive. When I have a great day, for a specific reason or for no reason, you'll find it here. And when I have a bad night like tonight, where my emotions are out of kilter and I am feeling down, that's going to go on the blog. When I wonder if I can sleep because there are too many things in my life that are unsettling, you're going to read about it. When I am frustrated and confused, it's all going to come out.

But you won't read here about a boyfriend on the side, or a girlfriend either for that matter. You won't read that I'm binge drinking, or even having a sip (except for that daquiri they forgot to virginize a couple weeks ago). You won't read that I have embezzled money, or even taken a quarter off someones desk (though I think I have taken a couple pens after writing a check at a gas station). And I'm not sitting in my hotel room watching porn either.

My life is an open book, I have nothing to hide.

So my internet danger is completely different than that of my children. I'm not worried that you will find out something about me that nobody knows. I am worried more that you will misinterpret something that I wrote either to be funny or in frustration about an issue in general and take it personally. I worry that something that I do will offend you but that you will not talk to me about it, but will instead be either angry or hurt and never tell me.

And that is my definition of personal internet danger.