Done with comments
Beginning in March 2000 I blogged regularly for more than twenty years. In all that time I had a comments section, and engaged at length with my commenters.
Fortunately my blog writing, and I suppose my comment responses, tended not to attract trolls. But having an audience, especially one that could respond in print, influenced my writing for better and for worse. I was careful to write so as to head off any confusion about what I was saying. That helped immensely, but also limited topics I wrote about.
And I avoided topics that I knew would likely draw responses I didn't want to deal with, questions I didn't want to answer, or at least didn't want to feel obligated to answer. And unlike a lot of writers who handle unwelcome or unwarranted feedback by just ignoring it, I couldn't shake the feeling that I should always be prepared to explain myself, and should do so whenever asked.
I am still haunted by that feeling, and although it is 99% in my imagination I don't like being so obligated, I'm even mildly resentful about it, either having to explain myself or to not write something because I'll need to explain myself.
So I leave the comments off, for now, probably forever. I also haven't yet decided whether to publish an email address where I can be reached, one solely for feedback on what I write here. I try to write only what I'm prepared to explain, to defend, but I don't always care to do it. So for now, no email address.
If you are genuinely unclear about what I am trying to say, or have some feedback to share that would truly benefit me, I apologize. I like to be clear, to know when I'm not being clear, and engaging others on topics I'm thinking and writing about. But over the years the burden of responding to feedback has mostly outweighed any blessings I've received from it, so for now my writing will be anonymous, un-respondable-to.
Previous |