Sean Kinsell and I had an email exchange earlier this week, and as Sean pointed out in a post titled "Secret Gardens," it resulted in my earlier post about blogging.

While Sean didn't quote from the email exchange (phew!), he offers some additional thoughts about blogging under his real name:

Since I write under my own name, I have to use content and tone that are compatible with my job, but that doesn't bother me. It's not as if people who try to make their points forcefully but civilly were overrepresented in the public discourse or anything. I also have a few teenaged readers and try to keep my occasional bawdiness mild and good-humored, the better to serve as a thrilling contrast with the latest Britney Spears or Jessica Simpson video.

Respecting what little privacy exists in my largely irrelevant personal life and in the privacy of others' personal lives is another consideration, which makes certain things off limits for discussion. (For example, I abhor the merging of the political with the personal, and this is epitomized by the practice of "outing" by the left, as well as the characterization of all homosexuals as being part of a sinister "gay agenda" by the right.) There's also the issue of taste. What some might like, others might find threatening. (Or even disgusting.)

Finally, while I know I wouldn't survive being subjected to a Google scrutiny test if I wanted to work for, say, a stodgy Philadelphia law firm, I try to always keep in mind that anything I say in this blog might have to be defended later. So I try to aspire to a sort of personal rule that I must be ready, willing, and able to defend anything I have said in this blog. Anytime, anywhere -- even publicly. This is not to say that I'm confident of the rightness of everything I say, because I have often made mistakes and been wrong. What it does mean is that I don't want to succumb to emotion and write things in the heat of passion I might later regret.

Otherwise, I do not consider myself bound by conventional wisdom or anyone's political agenda -- which makes me free to be as opinionated and as crazy as I want.