My Belief in Transparency

I have been thinking about composing a blog by this title for sometime. Prior to my addition of my blog on Ravelry and my drawing attention to my blog on FB, nobody really paid attention (other than my Mom, thanks Mom! and my friend Angela, love you Ang!) to the fact that I even had a blog.

When I first set this blog up, I questioned whether or not I should "protect" myself by adjusting my settings to only allow "approved" followers to view my words. To be honest, I made the decision to allow my blog to be public because of one reason alone - I have had the good fortune of learning from other people's blogs and would want someone to reap the same rewards. If you're my friend and you read my blog, you are probably not going to learn anything new about me. However, if you don't know me - you may be interested in learning about things that I am interested in and you may end up using it as a resource. My blogs are sometimes purely (read mostly) self-indulgent and a record of what I'm up to.

I titled this blog "My Belief in Transparency" because I want to say that I don't think there is anything wrong with letting people (even strangers) "in" within reason. I'm not gonna give you my address, telephone number or where I work. It's not necessary and that's not the purpose of this blog. Transparency can be, by definition, readily understood. That's pretty broad, isn't it? Obama spoke a lot about transparency when he was running for office and we all, obviously, understand that there are certain things our government cannot share with billions of people. Just like I'm not gonna share certain things on my blog. I think what we have become overly sensitive to, though, is sharing anything with people on the web.

This article was published today about a girl who lost her job from a non-profit organization because she was verbally critical (in her blog) of that community's politician(s)/organization(s). What's so interesting to me is that at the blog's height - she had 90,000 visitors. Now, thanks to this article (that was also featured on MSN or CNN where I initially heard about it) she's going to have way more visitors. Mmmmm... so now who looks kinda stupid? I haven't read her blog and I'm not going to - it's just food for thought.

Listen, if I write a negative blog about the company I work for then I shouldn't be working there, but - where do we draw the line? If I write a negative review on Yelp of an air conditioning company that I experienced bad service with and then they perform maintenance, at a reduced cost, on a unit at my work - should I be fired? Is that any different? How is that different? What if a manager of mine was married to the owner of that air conditioning company, is it ok for that manager to retaliate because of my yelp review?

I am planning on having weight loss surgery. There, I said it. I haven't told many people and, frankly, I don't want to. The reason being is because I don't want to get the lectures, the glances or experience the judgment (either to my face or behind my back). I've been overweight all of my life and I went through my first "medically supervised weight loss program" when I was 9 years old. Why, then, would I want to share something like this in a blog? Well, for good reason. There are a whole lot of obese Americans, 72.9% of the country's population is overweight, obese, or extremely obese. That is just crazy! That means that almost 3 out of 4 of us have some issue. I am not alone. Secondly, the subject is just taboo. People don't want to talk about surgery as an option, they want to talk about diet and exercise. I don't disagree that diet and exercise are huge components of weight loss, but when a person has over 100 pounds to lose - diet and exercise alone are an extremely challenging way to go.

I want to be able to talk about this experience first hand. I want to be able to be "transparent" about it so that people who are considering this option for themselves can ask me about what I went through. Or if people are vehemently opposed, I hope they will become more informed and perhaps they will find themselves changing their minds. Perhaps, my mind will be changed about it and I will think it was not the right fit for me after all was said and done. Either way, it's about LEARNING. If we can't learn about the human condition and everything our world has to offer, what do we want to learn about? Do we want to learn? Do we want to evolve and have a broader consciousness about those living in these "life and times"? I believe that the internet and blogs enable us to obtain this information more readily.

Finally, my thoughts about social networks are a little bit trickier. If you are not my FB friend, I really don't want you to see the 5 status updates I post daily. You don't need to know and you probably don't care. A blog should/could be a different type of vessel.

Hey, the first two words in the title of this blog are "My Belief"... that's all, this is solely my belief. You can have your own and blog all about it - that's what makes freedom of speech cool.