What I don't blog

Last summer's posts about blogging and work by Rochelle, Dorothea, and Meredith have been in my head again recently. I had the opportunity to pursue a job that required Top Secret clearance. I didn't pursue it, for reasons that had little to do with the security clearance, but it brought up issues about work and blogging.

The guy who called me about the job liked my blog. Let me repeat that, a government contractor with Top Secret clearance was interested in hiring me in a Top Secret position, in part, because he read my blog. Makes me think that employers who are afraid to hire bloggers because we might air dirty laundry in public should be working on their own trust issues.

When I was considering the job, I wondered how work that requires a security clearance would affect my blog. As the bloggers above pointed out, there are lines that you don't cross in your blog and they aren't always easy to see. The line for this job would just be in a different place. In the case of Top Secret work, that line is broad, deep, and spray-painted black so that you can't miss it. Are there enough things that are on this side of that line to write about? Sure there are--conferences, articles, other blogs, many of the same things that I write about now. In fact, it might help me establish a broad focus instead of narrowing in on minutia.

There are lines I don't cross in my blog right now--and I don't have an employer to keep happy.

When I get together with other students we complain--a lot. I believe it is an inalienable right of students who have little choice but to jump through each hoop whether it seems to be the right hoop at the right time to us or not. We need outlets and I prefer venting with other students rather than my husband. Or the readers of this blog. Complaints are boring unless you happen to also be trying to figure out how to handle an on-line assignment that still has a vestige of a blue book exam.

But I also don't complain much on my blog because I don't want my teachers to read about my problems here. (Not that I believe any of the teachers at my school read my blog, but they could.) If I have a problem that I should bring up to a teacher, that's what they invented email and the telephone for. Just as Rochelle, Dorothea, and Meredith wrote about in relation to work, I also want to retain an aura of professionalism on my blog by not dissing teachers or the school in a public forum over momentary frustrations. I chose this path and I like it, teachers and school included. My blog is about the path, not the momentary frustrations.     #

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