Special Delivery: Happy Valentine's Day

As a Valentine's Day post, I was going to link to every post saved in my Bloglines subscriptions. But I became oddly paranoid. After all, some of those links led to sites with the f-word in them, some led to writings I didn't necessarily agree with but felt were stimulating reading nonetheless, and some led to frivolous sites.

I started picking and choosing who to link to, but then decided it should be all or nothing -- a gesture of goodwill loses impact when it is selective. I began diligently cutting and pasting links, but began editorializing next to each link. I was soon editing some out.

A phrase has been used in the past week: You are what you blog. It's a warning to people to think before they put their writing online.

I agree that people need to carefully consider the consequences of their words, and take responsibility for what they've written.

And yet -- something rankles.

You are what you blog.

No I'm not. I only share certain parts of myself, and even those parts are heavily edited. You are not what you blog, and to limit people that way is to induce fear, paranoia and further self-censoring. It's to assume we're walking stereotypes: you're the feminist blogger, you're the neoconservative, you're the Catholic blogger, you're the atheist, you're the progressive blogger.

People evolve in their temperament, knowledge, and experience over their lifetimes. If I've learned anything over the past six months, it's that...

The last paragraph of this post has been edited because it was unspeakably sappy. You can draw your own conclusions.

Happy Valentine's Day.