Inability to post some things....

I am trying to write a book based on my experiences as a scientists, much in the spirit of James Herriot writing about being a countryside vet.

I'm running into a problem that I'm sure Jim also experienced: When writing about your own life and trying to make the stories heartfelt, alive, humorous, and poignant, you wind up revealing a lot about the people around you.  Not all of it is good for those people.

It's one thing to share stories that have the potential to embarass me.  It's another to reveal too much about another person's personality without their permission.  Where is the line?  Can I reveal what everyone who has worked with my current boss already knows:  that he's so nice he can't come up with better criticism than "I'm glad you are exploring your creativity" or what everyone who has worked with my former boss already knows: he'll tell you like it is even if it's not pretty.  Should I share a particularly trying situation with a coworker in order to bring humor to a pattern of similar relationships I have observed over the years, or should I just keep a lid on all of it?  Is it okay to share that someone other than me got us pretty lost once?

I can't just change the names.  That would help for future anonymous google searches, but the people who know us would be able to easily figure out who everyone is in real life.  Unfortunately, while we may not care that common names like Amanda and Tom and Peter and Rich and Morgan and Fernanda are attached to some random stories on the internet, we will care deeply if our full personalities and identities are attached to something potentially embarassing or revealing about us that friends and family can easily find.

I know of bloggers who reveal everything about themselves, their husbands, their family, their kids, their work, their friends, etc....  But I'm not comfortable with that.  I'm a pretty private person, and I wouldn't want someone else posting anything on the internet that revealed anything but the most blase of content about me without my approval.

So I'm writing this book.  It has a lot of personalities in it that are easy to identify.  I'm not comfortable with sharing it fully with anyone yet.  I keep thinking in my head that I'll publish it when I'm old and most of the people are either dead or old enough to have a healthy sense of humor about their younger selves.

Anyway, the point of this blog was to test out new material for the book, but it turns out that I have issues with that, and it's been up for a month or two and no one has posted any comments to help me with my writing.  This post has been cathartic, but I'd appreciate some direction here.  Please comment if you have read this far and tell me what you think, or just e-mail or call me.