At Least I Got A Blog Post Out Of It

End of the month = a post about blogging.
Prior posts here.

Good day at the horse show? Bad day with Rodney? The more important question is how many blog posts can I spin from it? In all areas of endeavor, I have found myself using the title phrase more often than is healthy. Life ought to be for living, not for making blog posts.

Names
Folks have asked why I mention their contribution to my life but do not give them credit. One reason – paranoia. Part of it is newspaper training. Mostly it comes from underlying obsessiveness. If I fail to mention names, the owners of those names might be miffed. If I mention names that do not wish to appear, there is a far greater potential for the owners to go ballistic. Nor is there any way to predict possible storms. It’s never the ones you expect that bite you in the a$$. In my professional life, I have been on the receiving end of a handful of rants, the causes of which baffle me to this day.

If I wish to use a name in a post, I ask first. Plus, I give the option to read the text before it is published. This requires more forward planning than I can usually manage in a daily blog.

Update. Text preview applies to guest posts.  Name usage for lessons, clinics, etc. is discussed in advance or omitted.

Titles
For regularly-appearing guest stars, I use titles instead of names to maintain the flow. If I where to say that Miss Courtney did X, a reader might have to pause for a moment to recall who Miss Courtney is and where she fits into the scheme of things. If I say that my instructor did X, readers can simply nod and keep going. Rodney & Mathilda are names I expect you to remember, the rest I try to explain.

(Miss First Name is an informal Southern courtesy halfway between First Name and Mrs. Last Name. It sounds odd to my Yankee ears, but it is meant with a combination of respect and affection, so I roll with it.)

In Sum
The effect of these policies is that the blog is all about meeeeee. This is not the intention as much as the result of not wanting the world to come crashing down around my head.

I have no idea if this will make the people I omit feel any better, but at least I got a blog post out of it.