Private or Public?

In the past few days, I am contemplating on the future of this blog. With the recent incident, I am not sure if this is still a good space to pour out my heart and soul. Contrary to my belief that not too many family and friends read this blog, I have found out the hard way.

Last year, I got rid of Google Analytics to meet the GDPR compliance; therefore, I had no idea who visits this site. When I logged into my Cloudflare account, I found out some stunning numbers. This blog receives 1,337 unique visitors in 24 hours. That’s 1,330 more than what I had expected for a day. It has 231,884 requests through Cloudflare a month.

Since most family members and friends interact with me through Facebook, I didn’t realize that they would venture into this space. I was dead wrong. Now what I write can come back and bite me very quick.

When I started this blog, I wrote mostly music reviews, books I read, and films I watched. As years went by, I wrote mostly about my personal stuff. It became a place for me to work out my emotions. It feels good getting all my issues down the page and knowing some strangers somewhere in the world would read them. I didn’t know it would hit close to home.

I have been blogging for 16 years; therefore, I still value this blog. I had written more negative thoughts than positive ones because those were my feelings. I don’t think my feelings are more important than anyone else. If that’s is the case, I tell them to their face than writing them down here.

I am not going to abandon this blog because I made a few mistakes here and there. This is where it all began. I am where I am today because of it. In the early days, it was both my personal space and professional career. I also met my wife through here. It means everything to me.

Having said that, I am thinking of making it private and offering memberships to only people who really want to read what I have to write. I will be more personal, but I probably won’t get into much trouble. Then part of my don’t like to have a closed website. I like the web to be opened. Yes, this is something I am still pondering upon. I just want to put out my thoughts.