Anonymity: comments after 22 months

In the beginning, I tried to maintain some semblance of anonymity. This was a futile exercise, but that never stops me from doing anything.

This morning, I woke to find more supportive comments on my blog about my wedding post than I expected. Those comments are probably the best thing that's happened to me since I started blogging. This wedding stuff--no matter how much you pretend otherwise, it's a big deal and it makes you face some of the uglier stuff about yourself and your relationships with your spouse-to-be, family, friends, and the oh-so-uncomfortable-subject of money.

While the comments were awesome, an email I got from a law school acquaintance/friend who's also getting married was even better:


> i just wanted to tell you that i really enjoy reading your blog, and I
> have for quite some time, but I have never commented b/c I think other
> people at school read it, and my name is rather
> distinctive, so I didn't want to have any hand in outing you.


Yeah. I've been outed for a while as far as I can tell. Random people at school started talking to me about details of my life that I never told people at school and I figured they must either read it or talk to people who read it.

I think I made a choice somewhere in the middle of 1L to post enough details that people could figure out who I was because it was just too hard to write anything cathartic while sensoring myself enough to stay anonymous. My only goal now is to keep my physical persona separate from my online persona in google (so I can keep blogging as a grown-up with a job, if I so choose). In order to do that, I try not to discuss my blog with anyone at school, but with my non-school friends--it's not any type of secret. Rather, when funny shit happens, they say, "Oh, you HAVE to put that in your blog..." The longer law school goes on, the more some of my law school friends approach the status of non-law school friends and the lines get blurred.

So basically, if you know who I am and have been respecting my wishes for anonymity by not posting: the gig is mainly up. I'd love to have your comments, just please-oh-please-oh-please don't connect my real name to this blog in any permanent medium (paper docs, web docs, recordings, etc.). Oh, yeah. Have I mentioned I'm generally paranoid?