Lori Bourne

Should Blogging Have Boundaries?

I love blogging. I really do. Between this blog and my Montessori blog, I've written several hundred posts over the last two years. I also love to read other people's blogs - I could spend a whole evening just surfing from blog to blog.

But one thing I've realized is that I will never be the kind of blogger that blogs about everything. Some people do. They seem to have no problems sharing really intimate thoughts with an audience of thousands (or hundreds of thousands). A few that spring to mind immediately are Heather Armstrong at dooce.com, Penelope Strunk at the Brazen Careerist, and Lindsay Ferrier at Suburban Turmoil.

These fearless ladies are willing to talk all about their marriages (and marital strife), parenting, families, personal struggles, and lots of other stuff. It definitely makes for fascinating reading. (When I went to each of their blogs to get the link, I couldn't help but start reading their most recent posts). And yet, I can't bring myself to do likewise. I often wonder, while reading their blogs, if their approach is actually healthy or not.

A good case can be made for keeping some boundaries while blogging. All three of the bloggers I mentioned above have mentioned times where they've gotten in trouble with family or friends for things they've said in their blogs. Hurt feelings, broken trust: is that necessary just to have a compelling blog?

It seems to me it's a big trade-off - on one hand, "tell-it-all" blogs are likely to get lots of links, generate lots of comments, and create controversy (which means people will talk about you...which is almost always good). On the other hand, you have lost your privacy and in some cases the special bond you have with people who truly know you. They're not likely to share their true feelings with you if they know that anything they say can end up in a blog post.

I definitely do try to be very honest when blogging, it's just that I limit the subject matter. Twice, I've opened up more personally on my business blog, and it felt pretty good. In the first one, I talk about the loss of my daughter; in the second, I give a candid overview of a typical day in my life. Both of them were hard to write, in a way. The first because it was painful, the second because I really had to stop and think about things that I often do without thinking about them.

I will continue to blog (it's certainly addicting), but use it as a way to instruct (my other blog) and a sort of online journal (this blog) where I can share thoughts and experiences. I've had a pretty interesting life, and I like having a place to talk about it. Most likely, it will still be more than anyone really wants to know about me ;)

My Life, In Miniature

When I was young, my parents bought a dollhouse for me and my two younger sisters. I don't remember if we asked for it or they surprised us with it, but either way, it was love at first sight for me. My sisters didn't really care too much about it, so quickly the dollhouse became mine. I think I was about 10 when we got it, and immediately I started buying and making stuff to put inside it.

The dollhouse and I were best buddies - it became sort of a training ground for me to try out different skills, and over the years I painted, wallpapered, shingled it, and even wired it for electric lights. Of course, I could never get all the lights to work at the same time, and spent hours testing connections to try to find out why one light wouldn't work one day and then work the next.

Because of the frustration with wiring it, but having the strong desire to see it lit up, I started to rely on miniature candles. Yes, they make real miniature candles. Why my parents let me routinely light 4-5 candles in my (highly flammable) dollhouse, I have no idea. Perhaps they didn't know what I was doing.

Blessedly, I never set the entire dollhouse on fire. However, there was one time that I lit a candle in the middle of the dollhouse dining room table, which I had made myself out of cardboard draped in fabric - with a flower arrangement in the middle made from tiny pieces of curled paper. Basically, a bonfire waiting to happen. I turned my back for a second, and when I looked at the table again, the entire thing was on fire. I don't remember how I put it out, but luckily not much damage was done.

When I got older, I thrilled to put things in my dollhouse that reflected my own life. They included real miniature pictures of our family in tiny frames,  a lovely mini oil painting I bought in Greece, and a tiny carved marble village from China. Every time we traveled, I tried to buy something for my dollhouse. If it was Christmas, I put up a tree (and lots of other decorations) in the dollhouse.

When I got married, I made a miniature wedding reception shadowbox. By then, I was pretty good at making miniatures.  I would even make little shadowboxes as gifts for friends and family. But I haven't done that in a long time. And I finally sold my childhood dollhouse a few years ago, as we didn't have room for it and I plan on buying a bigger and better one someday.

My parents bought a dollhouse for my daughter last year, and I've had so much fun buying things for Anna to put in it. I've also saved all my dollhouse furniture and accessories, and though many are too small or delicate for her to use, many of them have found their way to her dollhouse and I love seeing her play with them.

I have lots of dollhouse memories, like how the very morning my parents gave it to us (it was waiting under the Christmas tree), my cousin who was visiting got so excited she leaned on it and broke the railing of the balcony. But my favorite dollhouse memory is when I decided to put my hamster, Nathaniel, in the dollhouse because I longed to see what it looked like with a "real" tiny being in it. I think I was about 12 years old. When my parents found out about my plan, they (wisely) forbade me to do such a silly thing.

I decided to do it anyway (big surprise). I set Nathaniel in the dollhouse living room and watched his plump hamster body knock over chairs and tables. I went to go get my sisters and show them this wondrous sight, but when we returned I couldn't find Nathaniel in the dollhouse anymore. We searched the entire dollhouse, and the floor, and the room, and he had literally disappeared. I thought my heart would leap out of my chest, because now my parents would find out for sure.

Suddenly, we heard a scrabbling noise and found Nathaniel hidden behind the dollhouse staircase. I don't know how he got there, because the staircase was pretty heavy and it would have needed to move for him to get behind it, but there he was, gnawing on a tiny wooden watermelon he found in the kitchen. I was so relieved. And I still have the watermelon with Nathaniel's teeth marks on it -  a fun memory of the time when miniatures ruled my life.