A friend who blogs little and often wrote a piece, about why we should all be writing more. It hit home, but particularly one point…
“It’s dangerous for me to have a public presence due to race/gender/sexuality/etc.”
‘Dangerous’ is too strong a word for my main reason, but exposing my own views and thoughts somewhere where people can comment (I moderate comments, this still means I get to see them though) utterly terrifies me.
So often recently, when saying things scare me, I keep getting told (often from other women) that I’m being silly, or that I shouldn’t be and I should just do stuff. Which is bullshit. I’ve spent 37 years finding that when I don’t take the precautions that I do, bad things happen. I don’t mean things that are reportable, but I do mean things that undermine my confidence and emotional state.
I’m an emotionally sensitive person. I’ve stopped apologising for that (thanks to the support of people close to me), but that also means I’ve had to develop strategies to deal with people and things that upset me. And, when it comes to writing, that means not putting it out there for criticism. If you’ve ever had more than a short conversation with me in person, you’ll know that I’m not short on opinions, but putting them online means opening up oneself to criticism, ridicule, and abuse. And ‘ignore it’ doesn’t cut it for me, it stays in my head for days/weeks and my everyday life suffers as a result.
I’m collecting topics to write about. I’m willing to turn off comments if needs be (really hoping not to though), and for that I won’t apologise, I’ll merely link back to this post. This is essentially a call for the opposite of ‘man up’ as a response.
And a very deep breath.
Random Wittering 
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