A Nasty Downside

About a year ago, when I just started blogging, I had an incident occur in which I almost gave up the idea.

I told a former journalist (who is now an acquaintance,) that I had a blog and how much fun I was having writing it. She had never heard of such a thing, and decided to find out what they were about after I mentioned that there might be people out there writing about the articles she used to contribute.

When I got home, I followed out my own advice, and did Google search on her name. Sure enough, many of the articles that she had written could be found at the website of the newspaper. However, I also found a pretty evil site.

Someone had decided to make her their personal target. Not only was there a personal attack on her, but also on the site were pictures of her husband and children. And no, this was not in New York -- it was right here in the Caribbean.

It was quite disturbing.

And, of course, it was all written anonymously -- although it seems that the anonymous blogger lives someplace abroad.

The whole incident gave me pause for thought -- after all, here I am with my name and picture hanging out in cyber-space for all to see. Anyone who wanted to do the same thing to me, could easily do so.

The way I resolved it all for myself was to decide to keep on keeping on, because I am committed to playing a public role in transforming this rock of ours, if that is what it takes. Getting hit by some anonymously slung mud goes with the game, so I might as well steel myself for what is quite likely to come.

Given some of the things I have blogged, maybe I should be surprised that it has not come yet...