I’m currently reading Bill Bryson’s biography of Shakespeare, a small 200-page book, filled with more questions than answers, more of what we don’t know than what we do. It amazes me, as I sit and type this on my blog for anyone anywhere to read, how little was known of the man. Compared to him, my success is tiny. Compared to me, what’s known about him is minute. I find that fascinating.

There’s a bit of vulnerability that goes along with writing a blog. Okay, who are we kidding? There’s a LOT of vulnerability involved. I look over the archives sometimes and am shocked at how transparent I’ve been, even while trying to hide my frame of mind. There are whole periods when I didn’t blog, that are even more telling. I’ve tried not to share too many personal details for fear of being judged– what if people think I’m incompetent, etc? But a part of me also wishes I had just said the things that I left unsaid. That I had outlined my journey so that I could go back and look at it objectively.

My life’s been a bit of a roller-coaster the past few years, and so now that it’s settling down, I look back at it in amazement. Was that me who went to Ghana all alone? Was it really me who showed up with my bags at the Berkeley apartment of a woman I found on Craigslist  and agreed to live there without knowing the first thing about her? Was it me who was fearless enough to walk away from relationships that I knew were bad for me? Sometimes, I can’t believe it. But because I’ve written it, in a journal or in a blog or in an essay, there’s a documentation of my life should I, or my grandkids, or someone completely unrelated, want to go back and take a look at it.

There’s a lot that I don’t like about social media, about blogging, about the Internet. But just for this sharing, this public record of our (sometimes boring) lives, I love it.