De real danger of writing your mind publicly

Forget the Nobel Prize or any big award for writing. Forget censorship and forget that you could be killed, shot jailed for anything you write publicly.

The real danger of writing your mind publicly is well.. if nobody bothers with it.

Back in the old days of the print media , it was an honour to have your letter to the Editor printed (or even the letter to the Helen Haynes love advice column) because then the editor's approval was all that mattered.

It used to be nice if somebody would do a reply to the letter to the editor as another letter to the editor even if is one to cuss up.

Then came social media and Internet and not waiting for the approval of the editor.

Now to write and then hit publish and then post.

And then the nasty habit, much scorned. Waiting to see the responses. See if anybody would like or.. even better.. make a comment.. or or.. better 'share' to others.

Some people use social media cautiously. They do not click "like" things.

I got a text message about a thing  I wrote from an amazing woman "Yes.. I totally feel you .. "

and I texted back politely 'Thank you for reading' rather than saying.. "oh oh.. can you like and share and so on?

Yes, of course.. things are to be written for the benefit of the writer than any reader.. but deep down, secretly.. very secretly it is nice to know that what is written is connected with one reader (in the old days, the editor of the newspaper at least used to read..)

And yes there are random people who make comments.. some of them see the title of the posts and the blurbs and are kind.. they say eh eh.. I see you write something..

which could mean anything and there is the holding of breath.. well.. well.. what did you think?

It never surprises me that things that I take long hours on, labour over are not as liked/commented/shared as say the things which I take an hour or so doing and recently I have gotten to pushing the things in people's faces.. or rather.. their emails and texts and saying. okay.. what do you think of this.. in a tone of letters /words which implies if you don't tell me I will never speak to you again.

So , now, I have admitted my deepest fear of writing my mind publicly. I wonder how many people have the same fear so they don't write their minds publicly.

I will work on this fear. I will write things post them and never check back to see what happens. I will never look back until someone tags me or texts me or messages me.

Yeah , right.