The other day, I was thinking long and hard about blogging your health: what to say, how much detail to give, who gets to read your posts. It’s a tricky issue, to say the least. Let’s look at some positives and negatives.
The advantages of blogging your health can include:
- Ease. Make one post/update to your social networking site of choice and all your friends get the news at the same time. It’s quick and easy — and that’s good at a time when you may not have a lot of time and energy to devote to keeping everybody updated.
- It’s easy to track your progress. Days, weeks, or even years from now, you can look back at your journey. Whether you’re chronicling a major health crisis or your weight loss efforts or your seasonal allergies, it can be really helpful to have all your information in one place.
- It’s easy for friends and family to support you. You may not have time to chat on the phone with everyone, but a quick note/comment on your blogs can be a boost to your spirits.
- The most current information is available to everyone quickly. When friends and family are anxiously awaiting test results or for you to wake up in the recovery room, a quick blog post is a great way to get the good news out fast. (You may need to enlist a friend or family member to keep your journal updated when you can’t get to the keyboard, though!)
- Support from folks who have been there. Maybe a friend of a friend went through something similar — now you can be put in touch with someone who lived through it. It’s so easy to make connections and find support in a community the size of the Internet!
The disadvantages of blogging your health can include:
- People getting left out. I have a lot of online friends, but we don’t all use the same social networking sites. To keep everybody updated, I’d need to make identical posts to my Livejournal and Facebook… and probably get a MySpace or Twitter, too. And my parents STILL wouldn’t know what was going on, because they don’t do online social networking stuff at all.
- Strangers reading your story. Most social networking sites will let you determine how public you want your posts to be. But if you put it out there, you run the risk of someone reading about your life.
- Armchair physicians. Start talking about your health (online or in person) and you’ll often end up with a laundry list of advice. “This worked for my friend X.” “Oh, don’t do Y, I heard bad things about it.” By putting the news out there, you’re inviting all sorts of helpful (and unhelpful) advice.
- Looking to publish? Maybe you’d like to write a book about your experiences with whatever health issue you’re dealing with — good for you! But if you’ve published it online first, you’ve already used up your first world publishing rights. Try to sell your blog posts as a book and you may find that some publishers aren’t interested in reprints. Not everyone is looking to publish their experiences, of course, but it is a potential downside to being super-open about your health.
I’m sure I’m forgetting something. What do you think about blogging your health?