I always seem to have an internal struggle as to how personal I want to be on my blog. I know my wife is a big fan of “less is more”, considering she requests me not to blog about upcoming business trips because she doesn’t want the whole world knowing that she’ll be home alone. It’s a valid point and one that I’ve supported. I tend to marvel at some of the blogs that I read daily, whose authors are so transparent with their blogs. They don’t pull punches, they rarely protect the innocent, and just strive to be as honest and blatent as they can be. The crazy in me really respects that and wishes I could emulate them. I think my hangup with blogging more personally than I do has to do with my URL. Since my last name, Eicher, is in the URL of my blog, it becomes easily searchable – and more importantly FINDABLE – if someone were to google me. In fact, when you do, my website comes up as the second result, yet every “kenny eicher” on the first google page is about ME. A bit humbling and a bit “oops I crapped my pants.” Clicking on that second result only puts you two clicks away from this very page you are reading here. So that means that if someone were trying to find out more information on me, a potential client, old friend, etc… they could VERY easily stumble upon my blog. What if I had just blogged about some stupid thing some stupid friend in 8th grade did once and they happened to read it. How horrible would I feel? Maybe not so horrible at all…

See, Kate and I have a lot going on in our lives right now. We are stepping into the fast-paced, uncertain world of house selling and house buying. Our condo, which has been our home for the last 5 years, went on the market at 8:50 p.m. tonight. We have put an offer on a beautiful home on a half-acre of wooded property. I would absolutely LOVE to link you, my readers, to both the listing of our condo online as well tell you where the new house is and let you maps.google the neighborhood to see the satellite view… but I just can’t bring myself to that level of transparency. Is it the protective mother in me, of myself and my family? Is it the knowledge that I have of the web and it’s many varied not-so-pure uses? The chance that if I did let you know exactly where I lived and the next morning found my car tires slashed that I wouldn’t wonder if one of my blog readers came to my home in the middle of the night to cause me and/or my property harm… okay, now I’m just paranoid, but you can see how easy it is to get from A to B in my world.

Three blogs I’d like to point you toward to illustrate the type of blogger that I respect greatly, yet at the same time say to myself “Self, how could they type that? Don’t they know EVERYONE ON THE PLANET READS THEIR BLOG???”

  1. First would be our friends Joe and Laura Hays. Joe is a minister and is planting a church in Brooklyn, NYC and originally had the church plant in mind as the focus of his blog, brooklyn and beyond. However, when they found out that their second child, Ira Lester Hays, would be born with very serious complications, their world turned on end and have been using their blog as an outlet for their natural frustrations, sadness, hope and faith in the rollercoaster of life with a NICU baby.
  2. Next would be another minister named Mike Cope. I’ve heard Mike Cope speak once in Nashville at a conference I attended (he’s an amazing speaker) and have been following his blog for almost two years now. He blogs about almost every subject, but when he talks about how he and his wife lost a child at a young age and then the near-death accident their pre-teen son Chris just experienced, I just read his blog entrys thinking, “my God, how does he have the strength and courage to share these things with so many strangers.” And yet, at the same time your respect for this person triples with every word you read.
  3. Lastly, would be Heather Armstrong, aka dooce. Heather lost her job a few years back because she blogged – on her own time – about people she worked with. Word got out and she was fired. She now blogs full time, mostly about her life with her husband, new daughter, her struggle with depression and life in Salt Lake City after the Morman church. She blogs with brutal honesty and side-splitting humor. You never know what you’re going to read when you visit dooce, but you know that you’ll leave shaking your head and laughing out loud.

What does it take to be completely transparent? Unafraid of consequences? Is it a complete, maybe naive, trust of mankind, or a complete understanding of mankind’s sinful nature? Is it that some people just don’t care what others think, or they care so much they want people to know EVERYTHING? I think maybe when you feel something so powerful and so deep inside, it’s foolish to want to keep those feelings, emotions and stories to yourself. You need to let them out and if gets a little personal, than so what. God, I really respect that. I’m not sure if I really want to get to that level in my blog or, like a car wreck, just need to watch it happen to others…