Anonymous vs Identified

When I started to blog it was mostly to post my Friday Smiles.  Every Friday I would post a joke.  Then I took a liking to writing and started to post more, about everyday life, what ever happened that I felt I could write about.  I've met some pretty neat people through this blog, and through their blog as well, and I miss those days of logging in to see what Preppygirl was up to, or Marius... I miss them, reading them.  I miss my Blends (BLog friENDS) as I used to call them.  Most of us moved on to Bacefook, Twitter, Instagram or whatever else tickled our fancy, but in the process we lost touch.  I have kept in touch with some, I even met one person a few years back while driving by her town.  It was cool to meet IRL.

Since blogging became less present in my life, it was replaced with Postcrossing.  Doing the official thing only, i.e. sending/receiving registered cards through the site doesn't lead to meeting as many people as blogging did, but they have a Forum and on there we can exchange more.  Some people are intimidated by the Forum, so I've started a Bacefook group for Canadians wanting to exchange about postcards within Canada.  That was in April 2014.  We now have over three hundred members.  It's a fun group where we play many games, and share our addiction of postcards.  Through that I've also managed to meet some interesting people, develop some virtual friendships as well as real ones.  It's interesting to see the interactions between us.  Like in every group activity clicks develop, some become regulars, others are lurkers, it's quite a varied group.  We're a good bunch.  After all, we're all Canadians, eh!

Back in 1999, I had started to work on a manuscript.  I even sent it to a few publishers in town.  I didn't push it much, I was shy and (to this day, still) not sure I really want to share it.  Then again, I did had a few people read it. I did choose with whom I would share it.  The idea of sharing my story, dates back a long way (thus the original title of this blog: Stories 2 Tell), and the past few months the idea of actually sharing, here, one of my stories has been trotting in my head.  I'm thinking of using my blog as a 'publishing' tool, but then again I'm debating if I shouldn't instead start a new blog, completely anonymous so that nobody knows who the author is... because here many people know who I am IRL.  What started out very anonymous, slowly became more opened even if I never (I think?!) revealed my name on here nor those of the people I've mentioned.  Over the years this blog became for many a way to keep in touch with me, to know what was happening in my life even if we could talk IRL, some keep on reading for whatever reason.

I don't know what to do... I want to share my story because deep down I hope that what I did go through could maybe help at best one person to deal with a similar situation.  Writing about my father's suicide on here did trigger some reactions. I did tackle some subjects that made people angry, laugh and at times touched them too.  I still believe that everyone has a story to tell and in doing so, it might help one person to cope with something.  I'm just not sure... do you have any thoughts?  If so, please do share.