Dear Diary...

Via

Since I've started blogging again one thing I've struggled with is finding a balance between writing open, honest, genuine and interesting posts and while at the same time maintaining my own privacy and respecting the privacy of family & friends. Not to mention making all those great blogger connections! It's also really important to me to abide my confidentiality agreement that comes with my job. For the most part I think I'm finding my groove, some of it is instinct and other things I've picked up from other bloggers. I know what I'm comfortable sharing and if something feels like it's too much I go back and reword it before I hit publish.

The other day I came across a blog that totally blew me away as far as what they were sharing online...especially since I found the blog through a LinkedIn profile. I'm all for connecting and networking, if I blogged exclusively about summer camp or programming then I would totally have a link to my blog on my LinkedIn! But sometimes I blog about how much I love Vanilla Coke and Jesus. And sometimes I rant about being single. None of those things are particularly relevant to my professional life. When I clicked on the blog link I was expecting to read a blog full of interesting opinions and perspectives about volunteer work and experience working in non-profits, even a review blog would have made sense! Instead I spent an hour reading about relationship and friend drama. Exactly what employers look for when hiring, a person who airs their dirty laundry on the internet for all to see and makes no attempt to disguise themselves while doing it! Also featured was a photo of their drivers license complete with personal information!
Kind of blew my mind.

Like I said, I'm still figuring it out. Right now I don't have my Twitter connected to my blog (even though I do follow a few bloggers on Twitter), but it's something I've been considering lately. I already have a link to my Instagram and Pinterest, so I'm not entirely sure what the hold out is on Twitter. I still have those accounts locked because even though I accept 99.9% of Friend Requests there are still some I decline. I don't do it to be mean but if I don't recognize your name or can't easily identify you as a blogger or if it's clearly a spam account!

I think living with my parents inhibits my participating too, there are so many fun swaps and exchanges happening in the blog world, but I don't really want to explain to my parents why I'm getting packages from Florida. Heaven forbid somebody I know in real life start reading my blog! I've read about other bloggers' experiences with "coming out of the blogging closet" to their family and friends but I'm totally not there yet. Maybe someday, but not someday soon.

I don't really know where I was going with this post, it's just something I've been thinking about lately. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on things. How do you decide what to share on your blog or is it something you even think about? Do you have all your social media accounts connected to your blog, or separate accounts for the blog world and real life?

5 Years

This is my favourite picture of myself. There's nothing special about the photo itself, but it's all about the moment. I didn't know the photo was being taken until I was tagged in it on Facebook a few days later. In this moment I was standing at the Vespers Spot at the camp I grew up at, something I'm sure I did hundreds, maybe thousands of times over the 10 years I was a camper and volunteer there. What makes this moment important is it was the last time I would ever stand there. Due to a series of unfortunate events that started with the person who formally owned the land camp was on passing away without a will and ended with some relative of his voiding the lease and deciding to sell the land. Yesterday I didn't really talk about specific struggles, but this photo captures what has been one of the hardest things I've had to deal with. I have no idea why God would make/let that chain of events happen, especially to a place where so many campers, counsellors and volunteers found God among the trees and heard Him most clearly standing in the field. But He did. And now what used to be my favourite place on earth, the place where I learned the most about myself and life is in the process of becoming a subdivision. 

It's been five years since this all happened and it still hurts. Every time I drive by the sign advertising lots for sale I either tear up or am overcome with anger. For the sake of my sanity I have to believe with all my heart that there is an amazing reason for why this happened, I don't know it yet, and maybe I never will, but there's a reason. We tried to run the camp program by renting another camp for a few weeks each summer but two years ago the committee made the decision to end that as well. And that hurts too. I miss it every single day, and although there I things I love about my new/current camp, it's not the same.

I am thankful that I did get 10 amazing years there. Without camp I have no idea what I'd be doing right now, camp is so much a part of who I am, and that particularly camp will always remain one of the most important foundations of my life.