Regrets, I’ve Had a Few

Joelle said at some point on June 4, 2008

Get a cup of joe because I’m about to own up to something that I’m not all that proud of.  It’s important to me to write about, if not for catharsis, then to be an example.

Back when I first started blogging back in 2003, the whole blog community was so different. Those not in-the-know didn’t know what a blog was — it sounded foreign to them, like a fad — so I wasn’t too worried about people finding it.  It felt safe, for the most part. And while I used my real name for the longest time, even if only my first, there was this veil of anonymity that blogging provided.

I felt like the blogging world was a sort of bubble.  Sure, there was some nasty Blog Valley High-type drama during my first 6 months on the scene.  There was some gossip and some mudslinging and the occasional random troll.  But overall, while a few of those things hurt me personally — some of them quite deeply — my blog was a rapidly growing fish in a relatively small pond.  These things happen.  I didn’t start my blog with popularity in mind, but I won’t pretend I didn’t enjoy it. I had a lot of readers, enjoyed reading lots of blogs and for the most part, felt I was well-liked.

I thought I was always authentic.  I truly believed that I was 100% myself.  But I think if I was really being honest, I would say I was about 80% myself. Maybe 90%. I didn’t really know who “myself” was.  I was 29 years old and had recently ended a very bad relationship. I was in a period of self-discovery at that point in my life, a transition… so this popularity, while not totally foreign to me (gregarious is my middle name!) was definitely a much needed ego-boost.

As my traffic grew, sometimes I found myself writing for an audience.  Now, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. I still do that, but I’m in such a different place with myself and in my life that I do feel I am 100% authentic and true to myself.  My writing is what it is and anyone who knows me knows that I am as I present myself on my blog. I firmly believe that.

I’m embarrassed to admit that there were times back in the day that the desire to write something really entertaining and popular superseded my soul’s better judgment.  Fortunately, it didn’t happen but once or twice, but both times, I can see where I wasn’t just entertaining.  I was mean.

Back in July of 2004, I wrote a not-so-kind entry about a visit to one of my favorite local lounges called The Charcoal House.  It was a place I’d been frequenting, at least while I lived in San Diego, since I was 21. My father used to hang out there after golf when I was in high school.  I sang jazz on my own in front of an audience for the very first time there. I knew all the staff and regulars and truly liked them, despite how I portrayed them in my entry. They were all characters, mind you, each having very unique personalities and traits. But I, thinking I was just being “funny” and “descriptive”, blew them out into caricatures.  As if being “funny” and “descriptive” makes it OK to hurt someone’s feelings.

I didn’t realize at the time that I was being mean.  We all do that sort of thing sometimes, but about 5 months later I received a random email from one of the regulars, saying that she’d passed around my entry to many of the other regulars. She said that “while I may have lost a lot of weight I certainly didn’t become a very nice person”.  To quote the movie Mean Girls, I thought my stomach was going to fall out of my butt.  I felt absolutely awful.  A weird cocktail of embarrassment, self-righteousness, sadness, compassion, exposure and most surprisingly, like a fraud.  I felt like a fraud to myself.  I’m not a mean person and the fact that I’d written such harsh material was a reality check on the kind of blogger I was becoming.

In a panic, I removed all references to The Charcoal House from my blog. And, instead of writing back to her and owning up to my own bitchery, I stuck my head in the sand, absolutely mortified and ashamed that I had done that to those people. They had never been anything but kind and supportive of me when I sang, they were friendly, we’d shared cocktails, I’d danced with them… these were fine, genuine people.  Quirky, yes, but totally undeserving of the mockery I’d made of them.

I’ve tried to forget about that, to move on. I’m not one who holds on to regret because I feel it weighs people down. But I can’t let go of it until I face the music. I’m embarrassed not only by the callous manner, however entertaining, that I wrote about those people, as well as my reaction to being confronted by it.  It’s definitely not my proudest moment and I’m even a little nervous to be admitting it here, but I think it’s the right thing to do.

I’ve not been back to The Charcoal House since then and it’s one of my favorite places to sing. I’ve been terrified to go in there, but I just need to pull up my big girl panties, walk in and take the hit. If I see anyone that I may have offended, I’ll apologize.  I’m not a mean person. In fact, I torture myself whenever I think I may have hurt someone else, so this has come to mind a lot over the last 4 years.  Some people might say I should just let it go, that they’ve probably forgotten about it by now, but I haven’t.

I can’t be 100% authentically myself with this on my conscience. And I can’t give advice about blogging without being true to that.  We talk about privacy a lot in our book and we even talk about not being a bitch because there are real people on the other end of that computer.  A lot of people may think we mean other bloggers… and we do. But we also mean those who may just find your blog, on accident. That long lost boyfriend, that boy from 2nd grade you made fun of… whomever.  I drew upon this experience a lot for that section of the book, remembering how I felt when people were mean to me and how it felt to know I’d been mean to other people… all through this “anonymous” thing called blogging.  It’s not as anonymous as you think and that was a humbling lesson.

Now, had I not used the name of the restaurant, The Charcoal House, in my original entry, my offense may have never have been discovered. You can take that as a tip if you want, but that’s on you.  I only use the name of the establishment now because I’m hoping those I hurt will stumble upon this entry and know how truly sorry I am.