Losing your anonymity

Many of my fellow medics in amongst their busy schedules manage to keep some sort of a blog. However as we progress through our careers, some blogs may not be updated as regularly and this probably explains why there are more medical student blogs out there than blogs belonging to residents/ FY1’s. As a student, I have this need to document my adventures, mistakes and successes albeit in varying proportions, to be able to have a rant when others query my diagnosis and just to have a great means for us trauma queens out there to express ourselves! ;) It charts our journey from a ‘wanna be’ to a ‘gonna be’ and I think it’s nice to look back and see how we’ve (hopefully) progressed both professionally and personally. It’s partly the reason why I used to keep my own personal journal for many years and although this blog has partly taken the place of my journal, I still cannot bear to throw them away as it’s a little bit my history.

A fair few of my fellow medics do blog anonymously allowing them to share a lot more of their thoughts without fear of being reprimanded. Therefore when someone does lose their anonymity, it makes it all the more painful. After being discovered, a few people that I have gotten to know over the years had to either stop blogging altogether or they start blogging under another new identity. The latter – having to leave behind a blog that you’ve invested a lot of time in and instead build a new identity and new readership from scratch – can be annoying or it can be liberating, depends on your outlook I suppose.

To be honest, the issue of anonymity has never really mattered to me as I never intended to write as an anonymous entity. This was partly due to my opinion, where I didn’t think I was revealing anything confidential and partly because of all the effort it takes to remain anonymous which is a bit ironic, don’t you think? Yet when someone does make that link between you and your blog, it inevitably changes the way you write. There are days when I just want to have a huge rant but then I stop, because I remember that someone out there will make that connection and remember what I said and that is a little scary. On the other hand, I think it’s good because it allows me to censor myself (carefully planned rants Vs ‘in-the-heat-of-the-moment’ rants) and avoid saying/ typing something I regret later on. I thought I’d mention this because over this past month, a fair few people that I follow have had to go ‘off the radar’ using their last blog post as a sort of an eviction notice or suicide note – I can’t decide which! I know I should go through my blog reader and remove those now defunct blogs but then a part of me hopes they might just come back. It’s a shame really and I will miss them :(