Great, the blog is doing well but now I'm really public!

[peekyboo]

I'm not moaning, honestly! But I have just had the experience of my aspie blog reaching what I think of as the final corner of my life. I went public with my aspergers online, to strangers, friends, old school friends, vaguely related people and any relations already online.
This was enough to cause some sleepless nights in itself as your privacy no longer exists! But I never made it known to existing clients in my work as a private tutor, mainly because as I rely on my self-employed income to survive and they have to trust me with their children's private education. (I have told a couple of ex clients, who were very supportive and interested).
I've just taken a new client on this week whose older daughter found me online via my 'other stuff'. I'm assuming this other stuff is the aspie blog. She's not mentioned it and has still rung me for lessons, but it makes me wonder if this is the stage where anyone who finds me online, as a tutor, will also be almost bound to find the aspie blog too?
It might seem like a small thing, compared to everyone else knowing, but it's significant to me as it means complete strangers who expect to pay me for lessons will know absolutely loads about me, if they read it, then have to meet me as a professional who teaches their children.
I know I'm stressing, it threw me though!!

Amanda

www.aspie-girl.blogspot.co.uk/

[Nannytwotimes]

Sorry to read this it not surprised. Hope it all turns out ok. Best to keep these 'private' things just that. My daughter found me on here - no idea how. Thank goodness I hadn't said anything wrong!

[Tee2072]

Privacy is dead. This is a very good lesson in that.

[FloatyBeatie]

At least it sounds like the client and her daughter had a positive response to your "other" self. I can imagine that a frank account, with the right sort of tone, might create a positive impression of you as a potential tutor -- especially if it is a dc's aspergers that you write about. But it is bound to mean that you think twice about how you come across, and therefore that the blog doesn't have some of the raw truthfulness it might have had if anonymous. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, I suppose. It depends exactly what you want from the blog.

I have found the loss of online anonymity a very hard transition, too. I blog just a little bit under my real name. It's a quite unusual name so anyone who googles my name will find my whole online corpus easily. It is quite frightening, and one particularly hard thing is that lots of people have tweeted the blog posts and identified them as being those of [my anonymous twittername]. So now my tweets are all traceable to the rl me. Thank god for the bulk tweet-deletion services!

[FloatyBeatie]

Oh, just a thought! For some online stuff I have used initials and surname, rather than forename and surname. It's just a little tweak, but it does shield you a little bit from Google's sharp eyes.

[Whatsamsawtoday]

Peekyboo sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but once you start a blog there is no boundary between public and private knowledge and who can and cannot find you/ or information about you.

Blogging is about sharing.

My best advice to you - would be to only share what you are happy for anyone to know about you

//www.whatsamsawtoday.com

[peekyboo]

Well, I'll find out today what my new clients know about me as they cancelled last week.
I'm fine with it again now. I knew when I started the blog that I would be giving up privacy and that it would be hard to fence off what could stay private in the end.
I think it's one of those things I'll have to get used to as writing about the very essence of my personality is a strange thing in itself, very personal but which also brings a personal response from a lot of other people who are helped by it. I don't think that connection would be as strong if I wasn't being myself.
I just have to get used to it!

[Whatsamsawtoday]

You have hit the nail on the head! It is about making "connections".

I know it feels v strange in the beginning, and maybe a little intrusive, but the more you share - the more opportunity you have to connect.

And that is the whole point of a blog :)

//www.whatsamsawtoday.com