A difficult (but necessary) post

One of the other blogs I write has a disclaimer on the front page. I didn't do that here, because I didn't think I was going to write anything that would be provocative/piss people off. As is often the case, I was wrong.

This post is likely going to cost me readers. But I need to say this, so try to at least read the post before you extract me from your reader and leave me a comment that flames me to a crisp.

I do worry from time to time about things I say here offending someone who I know reads this blog. There are people who come to read that I don't know and who never comment and I don't know if they read something here and never come back or if they find something intriguing and just lurk, reading my posts. I'm pretty sure that there is at least one fairly regular reader who it kindve scares me that they read this.

I am fully aware that potential (and perhaps past) employers may read this. I am pretty sure things I've written here have made a professional relationship I'd hoped to save a nearly impossible endeavor. But when you start censoring yourself, you run out of things to write. Or at least you run out of things that anyone wants to read.

If I got paid for this, if this blog were my JOB, I'd certainly write it very differently. I may keep other blogs, under another name, where I write things that I would NEVER write here because I have things to say and don't want to make people uncomfortable.

Please realize, I've never written anything here (or on Twitter, for that matter) that was meant to hurt someone. It ties my stomach in knots to see people who are unhappy with either my post or another reader's comments. Even though I moderate comments, I do publish all of them (at least I have, to date).

The bottom line for me is summed up in the following XKCD comic. I'm sorry if it (or I) offend you.

For easier reading, click here.

I have some choices. I can stop blogging. I can nuke this blog and start writing somewhere else under a pseudonym. I can write completely unoffensive fluff (that NO ONE will read). But I think part of the above comic says it best.... "...I do know one thing: The solution doesn't involve watering down my every little idea and creative impulse for the sake of someday easing my fit into a mold. It doesn't involve tempering my life to better fit someone's expectations. It doesn't involve constantly holding back for fear of shaking things up..." Whether I do it here or elsewhere, I'm going to keep blogging. And if I let people in on where I move to, I'm just going to eventually end up in a situation where I'm going to say something that pisses people off again.

Many of you have commented that I must work with the biggest bunch of chucklefucks in the state I live in. I honestly think, though, that the problem isn't everyone I work with. Think about it... I have just HORRENDOUS things happen in every work situation I'm in. And just as the common denominator in three failed marriages is me, I think the bottom line is that I'm obviously incapable of sustaining personal or professional relationships. There is something about ME that irritates people, that aggravates them, that pisses them off. My insistence on being myself, when the thing that is truly valued is conformity, makes me highly undesirable. I am the petunia in the onion patch...

So, now I have to decide whether to dig in and stay or call it a day and find new soil.