Why start an anon blog when privacy does not seem to matter to some people anymore? Just look at your social media feeds. Crazy. Anyway, I’ll share with you why anonymity matters more to me than money or popularity. I’m not some controversial whistleblower, y’all need to chill. I am a normal individual who wants to blog anonymously for personal reasons.
For The Love Of Anon Blog
I fell in love with blogging back when Friendster was the coolest i.e. before Facebook. It was the social media and blogging platform of my generation. Good times. Eventually, I’ve progressed to Blogger and WordPress.com where I repeatedly experienced dying inside whenever my blog gets banned/deleted without warning. Fast forward to my affiliate marketing days and shameless self-promotion as a freelancer, having a self-hosted blog was the best decision I’ve ever made. Owning a website helped me out big time. It was part of my portfolio. However, if I could go back in time and change one thing: I should have created an anon blog.
Conditional Love
Transitioning from having a regular job to freelancing opened my eyes to a lot of things. The relationship I have with everyone around me has changed immensely over the years. Back when I started in 2010, working from home was unheard of in the Philippines. I remember telling my parents about quitting my call center job and becoming a full-time freelancer. It was tough. They were not happy about it. Their cash cow can’t take risks like this. I was technically the breadwinner, even though my father also has a job. Unfortunately, he’s one of those dads that puts himself first before his family’s needs. My mother is a stay-at-home mom. I am the firstborn, so you know where this is going. What choice do I have? I’ve read rants about parents using their kids as a walking bank account. Hashtag relatable.
Not everyone succeeds in freelancing, people go back to having regular jobs in most cases. But, I made it. Despite being treated as a disgrace to my clan at first, it worked out eventually. I was making three times my old salary, my parents love me again. I took it a step further by blogging about freelancing and exploring the world of making money online. Epic experience overall. My whole family, distant relatives included, knew about this. Everyone in my circle knew what I was doing, and how much money I’m making. I was so guileless. I thought blogging openly about what I do would help improve the lives of people around me. That I could motivate my jobless know-it-all relatives to work and stop asking for money. How wrong I was!
Filipino Style
It’s common to find big families living together in a small neighborhood here in the Philippines. In my case, we used to live in a compound with my maternal relatives. Growing up in that environment was… complicated. All the experiences, good and bad, we shared with them. I’d say my best years were up until high school. I barely spent time at home when I went to college because I studied and worked at the same time. And then full-time employment followed. The quality of our relationship and interactions went downhill from that point on. The family drama escalated. The biggest issue was money. We all need it, but not everyone wants to work for it. Entitled relatives are a real problem, but my parents were so blinded by the culture of keeping strong family ties. The entire situation was problematic. The last straw for me was getting robbed.
Here’s what happened. Every weekend, I go out with my boyfriend (now my husband) and I either come home late or spend the night at his place. We don’t see each other all week so spending quality time on weekends was our only escape. All my relatives knew about this, and they had a lot to say about my life choices as usual. But my point here is, they knew my work schedule and if I’m home or not. They’re also fully aware of which part of our house was my working spot. How did I come up with the conclusion that one of my beloved relatives (could be more) broke into my home office? Everything else in our house was untouched except that space. And my aunts and uncles who meddle with our lives all the time amazingly saw “nothing” that day.
I’m Not Okay
My mom called me when she discovered this. She was in shock and terrified of what could have happened if she caught the person doing it in the act. She heard someone shuffling through the cabinets in my home office, but ignored it because it was too early in the morning. And why would anyone suspect anything when all our neighbors are family? My immediate response upon hearing all this was to calm her down and reassure her the only thing of value that could have been stolen was my laptop. Fortunately, I took it with me when the incident happened. Even though in my mind, I know that I lost something valuable. Trust. Time to wake up from the fantasy that we are an awesome extended family.
As for my friends and social media connections, I didn’t have to go through as much trouble. Dealing with other people was easier because saying no is okay. We can’t expect everyone to be happy about our successes and that’s perfectly normal. Some challenges I faced included getting asked by random people to give them a job like I’m their personal job fair. And then there’s one who asked for my assistance in setting up a blog because some elements on his blog weren’t loading properly. To my amazement, this person was trying to build a replica of my website by copying the HTML source codes from my site. WTF. I forgot how I reacted, but I think I showed the guy how to install themes.
Anon Blog FTW
Going back to my anon blog decision. I feel more relaxed this way. Not only am I protecting my privacy, but the people around me as well. This blog may not gain popularity like the one I built almost ten years ago, that’s okay. Blogging is one of the many things I love but had to push aside because of life-changing circumstances. I regret sharing too much of myself with my family. To be honest, I had fun connecting with other people with similar interests. I learned a lot of things. But, I was too optimistic and dumb to think that my entire family would support me all the way.
