As a result, I've treated this space like a letter written to myself in the future. It's come to my attention that maybe that isn't the best way to go about this.
As a poet, I think my work gets stronger as I become more brutally honest. When you take the filter off in poetry and begin to touch the raw core of human experience your work becomes more real and more universal.
Life is always much messier than it appears to be on the surface. And this blog has been written almost entirely from under the surface, sometimes well under.
However - I am not only a poet and poetry is not the writing that produces my income stream or informs much of the work that propels the mechanism of my life along. I work in advocacy, as a journalist and, ironically for this space, as an advisor on how to manage a media presence.
Recently, it has come to my attention that the blog is actually getting read. (Thank you, google news alerts.) That has presented me with a dilemma. How do I keep the tone and ease-of-use of this blog while respecting the personal boundaries of the people in my life? It's a difficult question, one that Leonard Cohen has gone on record as saying can only be answered with "You don't." As a poet, that's true. As every other kind of writer and as a human being making difficult, life altering choices, probably not.
I've always said I'm a person first and journalist second, anything other than a person has to come second or life gets out of whack. In keeping with the spirit of this blog I want to tell you I am doing my best. If you are one of the people who has read the posts that divulge too much, well - that's done. I'm removing them now and I will make every effort, if you're one of the people in my life whom I love, to keep your interests and your feelings foremost in my mind.
When I forget, I hope you'll remind me just as I hope never to sacrifice compassion for honesty or vice versa.
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