Secret Life of StepfordReject61

I started blogging just about a month ago. I call myself, my real name, because, well - that's my name. I call my blog, Life in the Short Lane for reasons I don't completely understand yet. I've promised my mother in Virginia and probably the two other readers who have read my long winded bio that I will analyze this use of the word "short" as I go along.

In the meantime, I'm having a blast with my blog. Suddenly I have a whole new category of friends, called "bloggy". These virtual sensations are among the most fascinating women I have met in ages. Now, I, Mrs. Boring Cul De Sac Woman With Her Husband's Last Name, who is obsessed with her two daughters, her puppy and is trying to lose the same pounds she's been working on for the past three Januaries, is a regular virtual jetsetter. I have "friends" in other states, countries, hemispheres, and sometimes other states who live in other countries and hemispheres. At least I think I do.

And what do more than just a few of the bloggers I've thus far been most drawn to, have in common? They are anonymous, at least more anonymous than not. Real names are replaced with vague, possibly ironic  "usernames," like yogurtgirl, medicatedmomanon, and mintJulietaPhd. If I'm lucky, their profile picture might show the back of their head or a tattooed forearm. I'm drawn by these lively voices that I read before going to work on my own blog, which often measures as relatively tame - Just as I intended.

When I go to my new friend's profile pages sometimes I find two or more blogs next to their names. With a few clicks I realize I'm dealing not just with a tattooed,  guitar strummin', cussin' a blue streak bad ass, but a familiar creature who also happens to be a solid citizen from a small town in Georgia. Perhaps I discover she is a third grade teacher, a member of Toastmasters or a deacon at First Methodist church. With each click I am gifted with a small glimpse into another's complexity.

For all kinds of reasons, people occasionally assume a false identity, a pseudonym, a stripper name. We'll I'm toying with the prospect of assuming a stripper blog. 

I'll hide it from everybody. Fodder I've tried to wrestle into fiction for years, will be just the stuff to bare to complete strangers from Dayton, Hong Kong and Tuscaloosa. Through the anonymity of the blogosphere I can become my stripper name,my first dog's name or the name of a favorite dairy product.

"Why not just keep a journal, moron?"  a most unneighborly voice in my head taunts, the one that has GPS embedded in all my vulnerabilities. I tell my tormentor how blogging provides interaction, structure and immediacy. And I can make it all so pretty.

Perhaps someday a stripper blog will turn out to be just the place for a few of the stories I want to tell. Like many people, I've left orders for my family to burn my decades of journals when I die. But that didn't even work for the Pope.

What do you think? Do you have things you would write about if you had a stripper blog?