I realized yesterday that I am not completely honest, and this is why I love my blog.

Posting upon Tony, or any blog, is a performance. It is, of course, enhanced when you use a surrogate persona and/or pseudonym to write, which I do, but it would be still if I did not. It is exposing some piece of you in hopes of attracting others. Like a midrift t-shirt or a personals ad. But it is contrived.

At least in my case, I pretend to divulge my most intimate self, or that self’s memories. However, as I re-read these writings, I realize that I don’t ever really go Full Monty. I leave out things, like the present, because I don’t want to become vulnerable to attack.

This train of thought actually began as I considered keeping an actual, private, journal. I have attempted such things before and always failed because my true desire is to be exposed and not hidden away in a personally bound book. And the times I have written in a journal I have always imagined someone reading what I write and therefore I’ve written it in a particular way. It seems the gesture isn’t worthwhile for me if it doesn’t bring some outside gratification.

Hence the blog. And the natural delight in typing things for public consumption. And yet, the blog is limited by the need to make things interesting and not personally dangerous to myself. Hence Tony.

This is quite the catch-22 because I really really want to discover my authentic self, but I want to be read as well. What to do?