CPE Not Sharing Everything

Mea Culpa mia: To my mind, a good blog style is to share the daily mind meanders with anyone who hits the page on a browser. When I started this blog, I felt out of sorts.

I was phlegmatic about a bookstore (and the owner) because of frustrations working there part-time (I'm still going through a few). It was therapy for me. But it was also a process of letting go of my frustration by rethinking them as I re-read them in prose (I do go back and read what I write, not only to edit it).

But this struck me: narrating these disputes and dialogues by hanging out someone else's dirty laundry in public was like serving as the judge and jury for a person with both her own personal and public life.

So I went back and censored my posts, deleted several of them. Of course, everything is and was anonymous regarding which bookstore, who the owner is, even who I am. But as I blog on about other topics or other issues related to my daily life vis a vis books, in the back of this blog and in my conscience there is the thought that anyone on an Internet connection could land on a page full of accrimony and innuendo about a friend.

I'm not ready or able to tie up her loose ends and my own. Certainly not on a blog, though maybe in a short story, so I am going to censor myself about my daily frustrations at the bookstore.

A related issue: I will post photos from a community group I am involved in and share my blog address with members so they can see them via the Internet. So I can be personal on the blog without being confessional or using this 'space' to hammer on individuals who still frustrate me to no end.

I will not pretend that I have achieved serenity and a higher state of consciousness. But I have let go in the sense that I am giving my bookstore friends more space to carry on along the paths they have chosen without pretending that my prejudices should be of any great account. In my daily world of hands-on work in community groups or in local commerce and culture, I will try to share positive things. For the negative interactions and frustrations, in the future at Cheap Priceless Editions, I may just make up some totally fictional realm where I let loose without any intention to aim my darts.

As I turn over a new leaf, I would like to believe that readers do not try to read between the lines by trying to figure out who any barb of criticism I launch, in specific terms, is meant to pierce. I wish such harm on no one. Lord knows I could be the target of personal critiques on the order of "Boy does this Blogaulaire guy need to get his own house in order"!!