Blogging Without Oversharing: How to Stay Real & Protect Your Privacy

I hope this isn't too much talking about myself, but I'm not sure what else to cover in this thing. Years ago when I used to write a lot and put crappy books up on Amazon, after some burn out I had decided to retire from writing. Up until this blog, I hadn't written anything significant in about five years or so and had said I'd never write another word. I had gotten into art, and that was plenty fullfilling.

Hell, I feel more fulfillment from one piece of art than I did all the years writing bad fiction. I'm not sure what changed with this blog other than another mental health crisis.  I was just having a meltdown based on a lot of things, and after some time offline and some reflection on world events this blog was born.

I don't follow any kind of play book or "rules" of blogging or influencer culture. With only 12 subscribers (I know more than that acutally read this thing at least) I'd say I'm hardly an influencer of any kind. I look at some of the blogging hashtags on Bluesky and I feel out of place. Many of them have perfect pictures in exotic locations and talk about positivity and living your best life.

While I do my best to live my best life, its hardly glamorous or exotic. I'm some old fat guy on my couch most of the time just talking about whatever strange thing strikes me at a given time. I don't outline and don't really plot things out, though sometimes I organize a few talking points, but it doesn't always manifest itself the way I imagined.

I just kind of start typing and let it spill out intuitively. Thing is, I think thats what makes my blog stand out. In a world full of AI generated content or people trying to trick algorithms and outdo each other, I feel I offer a sense of authenticity that's gotten rather rare. At least it seems like it in some of my circles I've looked in.

I don't think that's just a blogging problem, I think that has permeated into a lot of our every day lives. Social media and online spaces is everyone's highlight reel, but we end up comparing ourselves to those things anyway. We want to live up to what we see our friends doing or at least not let on that we don't have it all together. I will tell you without gory details, I've posted some memes or art online while things were coming apart in with my mental health at times.

Looking back on 2024 we went through some very emotionally different times, but I never posted about it. I supposed I could have gotten some good sympathy engagement off if, but the whole events were so painful I simply didn't want to rehash it, so I processed it with my therapist and family offline and just never discussed it again.

There is nothing wrong with this. We don't owe anyone online our tragedy or trauma and I know in years past I've had a tendency to over share. So now I'm finding a balance of how real to be, without dumping literally all of my baggage at everyone's feet.

It helps having a good support system like I have, and I realize not everyone has that. For some, social media is their support system and I don't blame anyone who does post their trauma online. We all handle things differently. I'm simply talking about my own situations.

Oversharing on social media can be harder on our mental health if we're not careful. I know in my case I've given too much detail about a situation only to have everyone and their brother weighing in and picking my decisions apart. Problem is for a lot of life situations, you can't just explain all the ins and outs and nuance in a social media post. Especially to people who don't know you or your backstory.

This might come as a shock, but there are a lot of people on socials, and Facebook is especially bad about this, who will read and respond to personal posts in extremely bad faith without even attempting to understand you. Or they superimpose their own trauma and bad experience into your situation.

Mental health effects of oversharing on social media for me at least can cause increased anxiety or depression or some mix of both. I've gone back and deleted long posts because people were twisting my whole situation into some whole bizarre ordeal. So, for my own peace of mind I just took the whole thing down. What's funny is how quickly everyone forgets about it once its deleted.

How social media affects self-esteem and privacy is also related to how much you share. I'm not a fan of vaguebooking, but I get why people do it. Sometimes for my own nosiness I wish if someone posted that much about it they'd just come out and say what they are talking about. Context matters, but I get it, sometimes we want to just vent and not put ourselves too much out there.

I remember when we bought our house, its a small house and we bought it from family. Due to how things went down and selling our old house and the age of this house, we were able to buy it without a mortgage. I posted some pictures of it online and most were pretty cool about it but there were several posts like "Better check the wiring, better check the plumbing; that roof looks pretty bad." like we were aware of all of those things, and thats how we got such a good deal on the house. One person actually said "Not bad for a starter home" because its small. I mean, we'r in our 50s and our kids are grown up. Its meant to be our forever home, but go on I guess.

Anyway, I was very irritated and finally took posts and pictures of the house down, but did post a few after we got the roof fixed and got it repainted. I was just kind of blown away at how insensitive some poeple were. Also, I'm curious to see what they live in. In my experience in my years online, the most critical people usually are in not great situations themselves.

So, that was a big lesson, and saying we had no mortgage may have been too much info, I was just so excited I wanted to share my joy and I have very few real life friends. I'm sure some of that stuff was jealousy. We're hardly rich or wealthy, but we are fortunate so I'm not gonna act like we didn't have a string of good luck to get here. We've had a lot of bad luck since then so things seem to balance out. I haven't posted anywhere about the shitty luck we had in the years to follow and still won't as I just plan to deal with minus internet input.

Journaling for me has been a mindful social media habit. If something is pressing in my head I need to get out and is very personal, I hand write it in my journal. That's a safe place to get stuff off my chest without worrying about who is going to see it or what they are going to say. It kind of provides a filter. I can sometimes read through it and if I must post something post an edited version online without the more personal or sensitive details.

And that is really the key, whether its a blog or social media post, just finding that fine line of being authentic, but still protecting your privacy. I know I'm very open on here about my mental health journey, but still haven't shared some of the more ugly aspects to it and probably never will. Partly because its embarrassing, but also I just don't care to put it out there. I share that in therapy and once I process it out I don't want to return to it.

This ended up much longer than I intended, but I think we got some good stuff out of this post today. I hope if was helpful for someone out there. I love getting feedback from you guys on how this blog makes you feel. Feel free to subscribe. I may lower the price to my paid subscriptions to start with and see how that goes. Thank you all for reading and until next time.