It's The End of This Blog As We Know It

My mom’s boss found my blog.

My mom called me today and sounded like she had something to say to me, but was holding back. When I convinced her to tell me she said, I don’t want to upset you. I immediately thought someone died or was dying. Sad how the mind immediately jumps to the worst possible conclusion, but given that my cat and my grandfather both died around Christmas, I figure it’s not the happiest time of year.

She finally told me, Bruce (her boss) met a woman at a party he and his wife attended. The woman was a Lawyer. Anyway, she was Googling Bruce and came across my blog site. She sent him the link and told him how employers needed to be careful and Google themselves often because ex-employees may be spreading nasty things, or whatever. It’s not good for business or image.

It was a 2002 blog from the time I worked for a company in which he is a partner. I was ranting about the way the company was structured and how they treated me and how I felt to be working there. The reason Bruce’s name was in the blog was because I was explaining to you all about the myriad of companies all in the same office and how he tied into two of them. I guess I wasn’t really careful about using names because my friends were the only ones reading me and Google hadn’t gotten as sophisticated as to search for blog sites. Luckily I hadn’t said anything bad about him, nor had I mentioned my mom at all.

When he mentioned it to my mom, she turned shades of red. Bruce thought it was funny and loves to tease people about things, so I have since become nameless, only referred to by him as “The Blogger”. He told my mom he was going to go home and read the rest of it. My whole blog! My mom begged him not to, as she does not know what’s in here. She has never read it, nor does she want to, leaving it as my outlet.

The irony in this is a few weeks, if not a month earlier I had Googled myself, as we are all warned to do and found my blog showing up. It was the first time it had ever appeared during a Google search. I realized I had left my name in the 9/11 blog I did, in which I posted the email I received and sent on 9/11/01. I tried to erase it/edit it and was able, but my name still appeared. Then I did some research and learned how to code my template so my blog site wouldn’t appear when search engines searched. It has since ceased to appear.

My mother said she immediately tried to search for Bruce and replicate the lawyer’s findings, but was unable. It seemed my block had worked. Now, it was just the worry of him clicking on the email link and getting to my current and past blogs. Once that was taken care of, I began to worry about the next time I saw him. Not that he would care, as I said, he thought it was funny. Then I worried he would show it to the partners in the company where I used to work. I still see them from time to time when I visit my mom in her office, or we go to lunch. Not to mention that my mother still works with them and is friendly with them, as am I. It was all I could do not to worry for her.

I thought long and hard about deleting my entire blog for good. While it is good and therapeutic, it is no longer the outlet I so desparately needed to unload my emotions in a dark, dark point in my life. I thought I could just let go. When I worked for the copier company, I printed out all the entries. I have them through August of 2004, so did I really care if I wrote or not. I mean, what if one mistake or entry in the heat of anger had ruined a pleasant working environment for my mother, not to mention the fact she could have lost her job for my words. I’m not good at censoring or editing what I write, as I’ve always looked at this and wanted it to be a true, unfiltered look at my emotions and thoughts. I could always just give this up and start a new, better edited one.

After a few days, I believed the storm to have passed. The block had worked and maybe someday Blog will develop passwords to protect “intellectual property”, or at least enough the keep me from getting into trouble. For now, I’ll keep writing.