Realizations

Isn't it interesting that we forget who our audience is in life. Who is reading this blog? Who is exposed to what I type here? Who is hurt but what I type here? Am I hurt by what I type here? People can make assumptions about me from just reading one of my blogs. They can make assumptions about my life, my work, my family, my friends. This is an open forum into my life. At least it is as open as I let it be. An incident recently brought this to my attention and made me consider what and about whom I decide to post.

PEOPLE, anyone can read these blogs which means the person you may be speaking of can easily read this. I find it an extraordinary conclusion to think that your blog can be an area you can freely express yourself with no regard for the consequences you might receive. If you choose to rant and rave on your site about your personal life realize that it just became public. You have opened yourself up to scrutiny. I remember hearing once that you should never put in print (in our case type) what you don't want exposed to the public. A website, blog, or online diary is even more dangerous. There are very few ways to block out the public, to select your audience, to prevent others from seeing what you type.

I know that I haven't posted anything that I would feel uncomfortable exposed to public scrutiny, and I hope that I have in no way put anything on this blog that would in any way hurt me or anyone else connected to me. I am thinking about it more now. Thinking about who I may influence, who I may hurt, who I may leave an impression on by my words.

Just think about it. Make sure that if you were confronted with your own words you would not be in a bad situation.

Part II

I went out to celebrate the upcoming wedding of my friend Lindsay on Saturday. It was a fun time and I came to a very important conclusion. I realize that I am of the legal age to participate in alcoholic drinking. I have never partaken in this freedom I have both legally and in my opinion spiritually. There are various reasons that I have limited myself in this freedom. Sometimes these limitations have been from others when I was involved in ministries with students but I have overall had a self imposed limitation. I've never really known why I limited myself in this area but I've also never really had a deep desire to go out and try alcohol. It, thankfully, has never been a big draw for me. Now that doesn't mean that I push my choices on other people. We each draw our own lines on areas of this nature but this is my choice and I'm comfortable with it. But back to my Saturday night. For our celebration we ended up at a bar/club = alcoholic beverages sold there and a live band. My friends decided to partake in a drink or two though none of them were what I would call slap-happy drunk, actually most just had one or two drinks and were drinking water the rest of the night. But back to my conclusion. See there were many people at this bar who had consumed a lot of alcohol, too much in fact. And I realized beyond the effects of excessive drinking and the biological ramifications you also tend to loose all control of your mind. Not that you go crazy but some people do in fact loose the ability to even think. But more than that, you loose the ability to control what you say, how you reason, even the ability to reason. I like being very much in control of my ability to reason. You could say I'm a mind snob. I like being able to think, to think well, and to control this ability to think. So I guess you could say I reject alcohol becasue it would limit my ability to think (or think well). I may make random comments here and there but I know that I said them and I can quickly correct any missayings. When you are imbibed you loose that ability. So I accept this freedom but I'm going to go ahead and let it be a freedom that I don't partake of.

Call me a mind snob, I like that.