The only difference between us is everything

I was out at Borders on Saturday night, Saturday being the 29th (for clarification, since at the time of writing this I have no idea when this'll go live on the site). I went out there to meet a friend from NaNo07, a very pleasant woman by the name of Jennifer.

I've been mostly absent from the NaNo group meetings post-November. Moving three times has kind of sucked my time, and the general mental malaise of the past few months hasn't helped any. But I was out and about on Saturday, and figured what the hell. If someone was going to go out and sit to wait, I would join them. I didn't have anything on the burner that couldn't wait.

The first thing she said (and if you're reading this post, don't worry, this isn't about you, I swear, I'm far too selfish to do something like that) was that she had enjoyed my blog. Also that she found it confident and open and honest.

I sat there, holding this telephone directory of literary agents (which I didn't buy, if only because there were other things to buy [Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle and the World War Z audiobook, if you must know] and I'm not ready to deal with agents yet so the book would sit and gather dust...) listening to her and feeling some sort of disconnect upon the level of someone telling you that in actuality, caffeine was a depressant, up was down, and violence really was the answer. This as I was holding a book that could qualify in some cultures as a deadly weapon.

( ... continuing the parinthetical statement, I know the idea of a book sitting and gathering dust is a laugh and a half to anyone who knows anything about my book-buying habits. I now have nearly thirty books that are doing just that, and it doesn't seem like that's going to change in any appreciable way anytime soon.

Honestly, I just didn't want to shell out $30 for nonfiction. I will, eventually, but man I hate doing shit like that. Oh well, I can write it off for taxes next year, supposedly. )

Back to the matter at hand, I have been told numerous times that my blog is many things, but guarded and restrained were chief among them. This is stuff from people I *trust* too, so their opinion was what I highly regarded when it came to matters of opinion that I was far to subjective to make objectively.

So my friends thought my blog was distant, and people I barely know think it's honest. Hrm. What does that say about:

1) People I don't know so well,

2) People I know pretty darn well,

3) My blog, or most importantly,

4) Myself?

It's really hard to guage something like that, you know? Maybe I'm just that extreme to my friends. And I've heard that before. I don't pull a lot of punches around people I'm comfortable with and I try to make sure that I don't say anything in my blog that I'm someday going to regret (trust me, I say a lot of things to friends that I'd regret in the public forum of this lovely internet, no matter how isolated my corner may be).

I don't know how I feel about this, though. Is it good? Bad? Whatever? It's good that other people think I let it all out, even if that's not true. Is the illusion of honesty better than honesty? And am I even being dishonest? Just because I might bite my tongue from time to time, that doesn't necessarily make me less truthful or anything, does it?

This leads me to something I've already been thinking a lot of. I'll shove it into its own post, since it's a different subject and will make a long post in its own right.