no I haven’t thought about writing another sort of blog…well, that’s not entirely true…I do have a vague interest in it…but for now so much of my energy goes into the work I do on the blog and stuff that informs the blog—like all the email groups I’m part of and that I moderate….I’m in the midst of an intense education and it’s actually a full time job…

things may change at some point, but I’m not so sure…

in any case your ideas about how to deflect from the intense personal aspects of the blog are good…

one thing I’m mildly nervous about is that a few local bloggers read me…but I have no idea why…they don’t say anything about mental health on their blogs…so I’m worried that they know so much about me and I know nothing of that nature about them…in any case the ones I’m aware of seem like good folk…

oh…one of them is a therapist….but the rest, I’m clueless.

If they know me only through Salted I guess I’ll let them know that mental health issues aren’t all I write about, but Salted is about educating people on mental health issues with a particular emphasis on manic depression.

That’s as far as it has gotten so far. I have written particularly personal posts only to have someone I know pop up to read Salted for the first time… I think the reason I’ve avoided writing about sex related stuff for so long is because people I know offline read Salted, including at least one of my sisters.

Your blog is quite different than mine in how we write about the medication issue, but in terms of how personal our blogs can be I think we’re pretty much in the same boat when it comes to meeting and explaining them to other people.

The problem you face that I haven’t had to is explaining the addiction issue. Once that’s brought up then you have to explain your issues with psychiatry, the DSM and the rest of it… so, if I were you and meeting people for the first time and not wanting to get into a philosophical debate straight away, I think I’d go with “I blog about the issues surrounding mental health, and some of the alternative methods of dealing with them.”, or try to focus on some of the less intense posts you’ve written about. I’ve got the “No Post Days” I can talk openly about… maybe you can focus on the Dr. Norman Doidge kind of posts.

Have you thought about starting a non-health related blog?

And I’m not completely free of dealing with mental health issues either—not at all, I just look at them differently than a lot of mental health bloggers…but I still consider myself one with you and all other mental health bloggers…

in other words I still catergorize my blog as strictly mental health oriented as there are a lot of people like me who feel psych drugs have done more harm than good…

just wanted this to be clear since when you said I’m struggling with addiction it sounds like illicit drugs and that is NOT the case…

In any case, I’d love it if you felt inclined to send me a note via email to tell me how you negotiated the “what did you write about today” stuff and how did you feel about people you actually met maybe going and reading your intimate thoughts and feelings…I’m a bit scared of that.

People who don’t have a clue about all the shit we’ve gone through??

Hi Thor… I actually thought about asking about your meeting, I think it was part of that BlogHer thing, but then I decided I’d just be over thinking the whole adventure. Knowing you made it through unscathed helped…

Hi Gianna… I totally forgot to mention I was the only mental health blogger there, but then I read one of the other blogs and I think I was one of two. Because of the level of honesty needed to make a recovery blog work properly there’s a level of intimacy between reader and writer that most blogs never get to… it’s difficult to explain my Salted blog to people I know offline for the same reason it’s hard to have a conversation with a group of bloggers, it’s the problem of how do you answer the “so what did you blog about today?” question.

Most people blog about something they’ve seen on television or experienced second or third hand, and that’s great. I’m a big fan of new ways of seeing old problems. But you’re blogging about recovering from addiction, I’m writing about recovering from manic depression and father/abandonment issues and Thordora’s writing about recovering from postpartum depression.

Thanks bromac. I owe you an email, which I’ll send off once I wake up… or maybe earlier if my sleepwalking gets any worse.

Hi Zoom!, thanks again for the invitation… if this turns into a regular thing I may insist, at least once, we have the meeting here. But I’d be interested. When I published this post I knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t figure it out. It’s kind of like how I feel when I’m looking for something and it’s sitting on the table right in front of me… so thanks for pointing out the missing watermark. The large thing in the corner will be back, but I think for the not-so-special photos I’ll leave off anything else.

A lot of my posts get stolen wholesale by sploggers, so the large URL watermark is my way of making sure people know it’s my material they’re looking at on another blog… so that stays. I have been playing around with different secondary watermarks, and even larger sizes of photos, on my photoblog, which you are more than welcome to comment on…

Hello and welcome Hella Stella, it was great meeting you… I think I might have accidentally noticed you trying to dislodge that homefry, but that totally could have been something else entirely. I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve seen so far of your blog, and I’ll definitely be back later on…

Hi again Soire, I still owe you an email as well… sorry about that. I’d be interested in finding out how many times you’ve met with blogging groups, and how they’ve gone…

Thanks Clare… I think we need to plan something for our second year blogging anniversary…