Reflecting on blogging here

This blog is a journal, pretty much; a way for me to record our daily lives so that I can see for myself that we really do get things done in our unschooling fashion. Plus, my family lives so far away that I've always thought of it as a way for them to peek in on what's going on in our lives. Especially for my mom.

But last week we were up in Maine for a memorial service and there were over 30 of my mother's family members in attendance, so it was with frustration that I noted that out of all those people only two are actually registered to be able to check in on what's going on with us (no, my mom is not one of them). I guess I never realized that it's mostly friends and strangers who were reading.

Two years ago I had a falling out with someone I had been very close to. Unfortunately she did not "fight fair" and despite my efforts to the contrary, I lost my (and my children's) whole social circle along with her. It was a very long, drawn-out severance, but the two of us are civil now; when she dropped her son off at E's birthday party on Monday, none of my new friends could detect any tension between us.

However a couple of weeks before I made this blog private, a mutual friend mentioned to me that she had had dinner with this woman and another. This woman asked my friend if it was a photo of her on my blog she had seen, because it was hard to tell if it was her, and my friend replied yes. Then my friend asked these two women if they regularly read my blog, and the reply was "oh yes, we read it all the time".

Well this was actually the third time someone mentioned to me that this woman questioned them about things she had read on my blog. Two other people had actually mentioned being interrogated by her about whether I was speaking of them when talking about play dates and such. And yes, both of them actually used the word "interrogated" to describe how they felt.

I got really weirded out by this so I made my blog private. I had actually made this blog private once before, but upon reflecting, chose not to give this woman that kind of power over me and opened it up again. But it's feeling too creepy now.

I feel really sad about this. I do not blog as often as I used to. Yes, I write for myself, but it's always been kind of cool knowing that people out there were checking in on the "day-in-the-life" of my unschooling family.

I feel really sad knowing that my mother's giant family (and my mother, herself) have not accepted my invitation to register so they can drop in once in a while.

I feel really victimized by this woman. Blogging is something I have really enjoyed doing and I feel like she's taken that away from me by making me feel like I'm being stalked. Yes, call the word extreme, but the fact is that all the friends she "won" are finally starting to realize how narcissistic she is. And not only does she lurk in my life and discuss it with others, but she always seems to expect me to know what's going on in hers on the few occasions we speak; she thinks I'm talking about her with other people the way she talks about me. Argh.

The only good thing that has come of this is that I can rid myself of her negative energy through blogging about this now, knowing she can't read it, or that it will not be conveyed to her. And even if it is, at this point I really don't care. Her karma will take care of her.

I need to concentrate on finding my motivation to continue doing this.

*Sigh*