My friend started a blog yesterday (yeay!) and poses this question to us all: “Why did you chose to blog under a pseudonym or your real name? Has it changed what you write about, or what you say?”

Here’s my answer:

I write under a pseudonym because three plus years of law school and ten plus years of practicing law makes me suspicious of many things. Plus, one very pushy lawyer friend insisted I do so. I am glad I took his advice. Anonymity works well for me regarding my employer, my clients, and my family (not necessarily in that order). The safety concerns also weigh in favor of anonymity.

What I write about is not very different because I use a pseudonym–I treat it as though the anonymity can be pierced at any time. What more influences me to monitor what I write about is that (1) being on the internet opens my writing to the general public and there are just some topics that are too private (even with anonymity); (2) blogs have no (or very little) copyright protection–so I don’t want to put my magnum opus out there “for free”; and (3) bloggers, generally, are not journalists, and as such they potentially have less protection than a journalist from the standpoint of the First Amendment–what you blog about may land you in legal trouble arguably without the defenses afforded to a journalist.

I stay away from topics I am not ready to deal with openly. If there is someone I feel I would not want to know a certain story of my life, then I don’t blog about it. This is more a test for me to gauge whether I am ready to “go public” with a story. Sometimes anonymity can make you feel more secure in telling something you otherwise wouldn’t. It can be a fine line about being really honest in a post versus discussing something that is not “blog appropriate.”

In the end, blogging means different things to different people. And for me, it isn’t about baring my entire soul. It’s about writing–writing honestly. Sometimes what I write will be quite personal and other days it will be silly, but my goal is for it always to be authentic.

That’s just my opinion. What’s yours?