One of the great things about blogging and specifically about LiveJournal is that you can infinitely customize your post setings and make your blog whatever you want it to be. Let's be honest, if we don't post privately then we're hoping that someone somewhere is paying enough attention to read what we write. I have no problem with that, particularly when I have something I think is valid that I want to share. Anything that is not for public consumption I post privately for myself only. Rather than post memes and trivialities like that in public posts, I post news and politics and my artwork. I post music and humor, and things that are designed to provoke and inspire dialogue because I don't see enough of it. I post the majority of my private life to separate filters, a good percentage of which is only viewable by myself. My public posting is usually relevant to what is going on externally but there are a chosen few who have access to my filtered posts. I get a lot of email in feedback about my posts in addition to comments from other users, most from people who don't want to contribute comments to my posts for fear of getting flamed by others. I also get a god bit of opposition to my political posts, most of it from a small but tenacious handful of people who cannot agree to disagree on most anything, because unless you're a blind follower of the Bush Administration and/or the
I'm going to spend some time very soon overhauling my layouts to add a section of yet MORE links to things I think are important, everything from scrutinizing our elected officials to sexism, racism, homophobia, public education, poverty, hunger, and a slew of other subjects that I don't think enough people are truly aware of. If you're reading this and have an idea for a subject you'd like me to address, by all means comment and let it be known. I'm also going to add a copyable HTML link (behind a cut so as to prevent the borking of your own layout) to certain posts, most likely news and politics, that allow other users to more easily link to my posts by copying a single line of code and posting it to their own LJ's in an effort to hopefully get people interested in current events and issues that really do affect us all. It is my hope that people will take advantage of this and link to my posts more in the future. For those of you who do this already I offer my gratitude. I have a lot of peeople who have added me to their friends lists as a result of this, and I appreciate everyone that takes the time to read - even those of you who only read me so you can try and jerk my chain. Being challenged is a great thing however it happens, it either helps you to reevaluate what you think you believe and change your mind on how you feel about something, or it serves to reaffirm your existing beliefs and reground your original position - regardless, both things are valuable. Case in point, the user that faithfully emails me when I make a post on religious matters, complaining of being grossly offended by my immoral lifestyle, my faithlessness, and my dislike of the church as an institution. For the record, let me make one thing clear once and for all. If you're a believer, and your faith is solid, nothing I say about God or the Pope or contradictions and hypocrisies in dogmatic law should affect you. There are worse things than being offended by something I say, don't mke me fucking hunt you down and bitchslap you with a bible mygoddamned self for using words like "Christian" and "Persecution" with respect to one another in the same sentence. Get the fuck over yourselves, not everyone has to share your everchanging worldview on Jesus. Beat me with one more bible and I'll make you eat the fucking thing. I have several friends in real life as well as on LJ who are devout believers, some even studying for and/or working in the clergy, and even THEY 'get it'.