Neither I, nor the hubs have any inclination toward political office which is probably a good thing. As we all know, everything you put on the Internet stays there forever and ever and ever and sometimes as bloggers we tend to forget that little fact. I sometimes wonder if the words that I write here will some how turn around and bite me or my family in the arse.

I think at times it’s easy to think that what you write would never be used against you, but they really could be especially since the information could be dug up at any time. As a blogger, you want a certain level of notoriety but as always, there is a fine line between being famous and being infamous!

I try to keep a few things in mind when I write:

• How will this affect my family now?
• How will it affect my family later?
• What will my kids think in 10 years if they happen to stumble upon this record?
• If I decide to make it back into the workforce, will this blog have a negative or positive effect?

There are times when something in your life just gets a hold of you and you just have to write your response to it, but maybe those are the times that it is best to step back and ask if that it really a record that you want following you.

In addition to personal checks and balances while writing, I also do a few proactive things:

• Google: I google my legal name from time to time to see what Google has to say about me (and as an extension, my family.)
• My MIL and a few aunts are readers. This is kind of an internal check… if I think something could be embarrassing for them to read or for one of their friends to read, I change the wording a bit. (Now some things are kind of embarrassing because they happened when I was younger and show a lack of maturity, but those are a bit different because they helped shape who I am today.)
• I try to stick to topics that I can factually back up. There are some opinion pieces (like this one and many of my early posts,) but I tend to prefer to write posts about things that I can factually document. Guess it’s the scientist in me!

Some people might look at this is personal censorship but it’s how I roll. And as the author of this blog, how I roll trumps all.
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Are you a blogger? IS there such thing as putting too much information out there? How do you keep everything in check?