When I started this blog some time at least a year ago, my first idea was to find a space for my travel writing which would enable my friends and family to keep in touch if they so chose, rather than me bombarding them with impersonal emails they didn't really want to get, particularly if written from far away shores and sunny places. I know what it feels like on a drioch and windy day to get emails from trips around Burma, and I do keep them for reading when I feel less pished off with the weather (Sorry V, I know I asked for them, and very keen to read them some time very soon!).

I also meant to find a space for making my academic writing available for a handful of people who may be interested in reading them. Not assuming anyone would be mind you. No illusions there, but better than not sharing them.

Then I came across other pieces of writing in cupboards (read: hard disks) and I added them on. Only then did I get into reading blogs, and realising the beauty of chit chat, the joy of reading a alternative journalism and political blogs, as well as expat blogs. So I started to post regularly about whatever took my fancy.

I knew very well from the start that the greatest thing about blogs is that it's your own personal space for better or worse. I knew about the dangers of exposing yourself and treaded lightly on that side, keeping it sort of, but not entirely anonymous. You can in fact find out my name on this site. I also loved the initially small civiblog community and still read some of the blogs on it regularly. I was also aware that most blogs are either single issue based or very personal, and mine was a combination, which wouldn't attrack a massive readership nor lots of comments.

It never came easy to me to blog about personalish stuff on the same site which also blogs about asylum issues - but I also know that friends far away from me do sometimes read my blog, and I don't get the time to phone regularly or even email as much as I would like. And when it comes down to it, it's a fairer representation of who I am. So this space IS both personal and public, it is both for my friends and total strangers interested in the issues that catch my eye.

Now, a political comment I made on a political based blog was responded to not with anything to do with my comment, but a reference to my personal situation. While I greet the fact that someone went to the trouble of reading my blog, and it is well possible that no offence or badwill was intended, indeed, the intention may have been entirely friendly, yet I feel ridiculed. Ridiculed that my comment was not worthy of being responded to on a contents basis. Ridiculted because I share personal stuff that others writing political or issue based blogs may not. Ridiculed that my writing is insignificant, rubbish and cuold be done without.

Suddenly it dawns on me that even blogging on a site with hardly any readers at all, I am putting myself forward for a kind of attention which I have always dreaded and loathed. For a good few days I struggled to decide whether to ignore it or confront it. I've done neither, but it keeps nagging. I'm probably paranoid, but so be it.

And I simply don't have a decent ending for this post.