Miranda Murphy

One of the scary things about digital life is that one can't depend on stuff fading into dust any more, the way analog media do. It's a variation of Miranda:

Everything you say digitally will be remembered, and can be used against you.

This didn't worry me much until I ran into this corollary of Murphy's Law:

If something you say can be misinterpreted, it will.

All this came together in a rather unfortunate series of events that led directly to the intermittent posting of the last few months. I learned the hard way that quotes on a semi-public blog concerned entirely with private thoughts ("semi" given the minute readership of this blog, but "public" given the existence of search engines) can bleed over into one's work life.

I have had to think long and hard about whether I'm willing to continue to take the risk of blogging under my own name. For now, I've decided to keep going. Somebody will probably use my writing against me (and my employer) again, but the pressure of exposing myself to criticism is invaluable in improving the quality and clarity of my thinking. If it were anonymous, I might as well just write a private journal.

The Lesson for the reader? If you write a blog, remember that you don't just have the Muse floating over your left shoulder; Miranda Murphy is on your right, as well.