My journey through the twists and turns of career-like employment has taken yet another unexpected path.
For the past several months I have been building a practice, reveling working from home, and lamenting how long it takes to get any real business up and running. I have been networking like a mad fiend, and talking to everyone who may have been able to advise me, direct me, teach me, or assist me in starting this practice. As a result of this hard (if unpaid) work, this month, January, marks the period when I will be able to actually count on regular work, and therefore regular income, from my practice.
So it should come to no surprise to any of you that now is when I get a legititmate employment inquiry.
Yes, that’s right, I have been given an opportunity to discuss an alternative to starting my own practice. I meet with the lovely woman and potential would be boss in a week, three days before I am supposed to accept the contract that will infuse my practice with opportunity. I will give more details about the would be job when I am finished meeting with her and know more about whether or not there is a solid offer to consider. However… there is a slight problem with the potential position. In order to safely accept it, I may have to delete my blog.
Which takes us to the crux of this post.
If I end up with a job resulting from this meeting it will be one that involves making criminals very unhappy. As a result, those criminals may wish to exact revenge upon me. Ergo… I should not have a blog, with pictures of my family, in existence when those criminals go a looking. (That would be verra verra bad.)
Due to the sheer amount of time and energy I have put into this blog (albeit not lately) I find this very distressing. The thought of no longer having this wonderful connection to the world saddens me. However, it would be silly to turn down a really good position and opportunity to learn from an amazing mentor just to keep a blog.
So I am thinking I will likely save the blog in a series of books, through one of the many book making options out there, and delete the creature of my creation from the blogosphere. Hopefully, I will then be able to create a new blog (without pictures and directions to my house), that I can use to discuss the non-confidential aspects of my new career (if there is one). I can’t stand the thought of deleting these pages without saving them to something, I have written so much about my life in the past two or so years. This blog is a baby book, journal, diary, and christmas letter in one!
I suppose another option would be to save it in book form, and then painstakingly go through every single page and delete all the photos and identifiable references to my family. Then I could take the blog in a new direction without appearing to be a brand new blog with no posts in history. (This post marks my 567th such writing since the blog began.)
What do you think? Is there a way to save the blog if I take a chance on criminal law?
I think you should make a book, this is important family history.
A quick search in the wayback machine has your URI and real-life kids names. So, you need to consider that the interwebs are cached. You want to help the honest people stay honest, but if someone really really wants to find you – they can.
True enough, though hubby indicated you can petition Google (at least) to cache your url so it won’t show up in the past.
Don’t know how much that would help really.
Well, I’d hate to lose the blog you have now but protecting your family is important. Definitely make a book if you have to change the blog so you don’t lose the pictures and stories you shared about life on the east coast.
There’s lots of information on all of us out there on the web. Dan looked me up the other day and there are old addresses, my birth date, even my facebook profile picture came up just by searching for little ol’ me.
I think about this a lot actually. My huz is also in the business of pissing off bad guys and people in his line of work absolutely get targeted. They’re also press targets and we’ve had some scary press run-ins (as in showing up on the doorstep when our info should not be public). I am really uncomfortable with putting us out there… and I really, really, really love to blog.
I sort of go back and forth. Sometimes my blog is private. Sometimes I don’t blog. Sometimes I just go for it. I think sometimes about going anonymous but I’m really bad at being general and non-informative like that. My huz is very supportive of my blogging and doesn’t worry at all. I think it helps that he has a really common name and I have a different name altogether so it would be harder to track it down. I still worry more than him. I am constantly torn between my need to blog and my fear of the repercussions.
Some of my answer is Facebook, which I trust more than the internet as a whole. Although I did connect w/ an old boyfriend once who looked at my profile and recognized huz from his work. The world can be a frighteningly small place!
Anyway – if you want to chat more, I’m on facebook (can can find me through Barb).
Nicole
Nicole,
Thank you for your insight. I will have to noodle on it for a bit. I think maybe I can blog and just remove the images that would immediately link me to the blog. Who knows.
I know it is next to impossible to remove your info from the “internets” once it is out there. Hopefully it will never be an issue.
Gosh, what a situation. I know I wished you the best and predicted that your hard work would pay off in the end but this is a bit of a surprise.
I would take the job in these uncertain times, but the write the book. You can still visit the blogsphere in a new identity, maybe as a capped crusader!
If you decide to shut done lawandmother I will be sad (as you have become a welcome regular on SuperSense http://brucemhood.wordpress.com/)
but I would be happy knowing that you are moving up and on.
bruce
Thank you Bruce! I will greatly miss the blogsphere as well, I am hoping I can find a compromise.
Though I will still visit SuperSense of course, regardless of the status of L&M.
What about making this one private, so your friends and family can still see it, and then if you don’t want to blog privately, you can start up a new one, and slowly import posts (if you want) after cleansing them of personal info?
I used to work for first Child Support Enforcement and then the Public Defender. Be sure to make yours and hubby’s voter records private. You need to go to your county voting office to do this.
(PS- another reason why I’ve been careful about anonymity- although, it’s been about 5 years since Child Support Enforcement- which had my signature and info on everything. At least with the PD’s office, I could illegibly scribble my signature on the certificates of mailing!)
That’s not a bad idea Mntnlover… I should look into it.