Rambelings

While at West Point I had a blog that I updated regularly. Back then I told myself that I didn't care who read the blog or what they thought. The blog was basically an online journal for me, though I did try to at least recognize that other people would be reading the blog entries. I stopped updating the blog regularly after I graduated and was deployed to Iraq later that year. The Army was beginning to realize the operational security (OPSEC) implications of blogs and social network sites such as Facebook and Myspace and as a result there was a lot of interest in who was maintaining a blog or Facebook page and what they were posting. My somewhat carefree view of a blog as an outlet and way to share my thoughts and adventures of that day with my family and friends changed because I was worried that the people I worked with, or would work with in the future, would see the blog and not approve of something I wrote. It grew to the the point that I found it too much work to find something to write about that would make it past all of my self-censoring.

I have tried to start handwritten journals many times, but they never provide me with the satisfaction and ability to see my thoughts clearly like typing them out provides to me. Handwritten journals also don't provide me with the invisible audience (yet also very visible - Hi Family!) that acts as a motivation for me to write. It does seem a bit strange to me that I keep my thoughts to myself in speaking unless I judge my thought to be of enough interest to another person or have a need to share the thought, but that I also prefer to have an audience in the background when I write down my thoughts and daily life.

With so many recent changes happening with Joe and I (marriage, command, Jenavieve's death, baby on the  way, moving again in the future), I do hope to start blogging again to chronicle my thoughts and daily life with some of the enthusiasm that I approached it with while in college.