My blog is my journal.

A way to express my deepest thoughts, my secret fears, my constant insecurities.

It’s a venue where I can freely show who I am without judgement, talk to myself with nobody thinking I’m bonkers, and to see and chronicle my thoughts out in a white blank page, hopefully to last for awhile till WordPress crashes and erases everything away.

This is my third time to start a blog.

I still own a blogger web log which has been read by over 30,000 readers in the last three years.

Amazing numbers till you do the math.

My readers have been growing though, and lately, I’ve enjoyed a steady stream of insightful commenters who make me feel less lonely in the world.

I stopped blogging in that weblog because I’ve lost my anonymity.

Some of my readers discovered who I was, and knew me in a social setting.

My blog, which I’ve deemed as private, was now exposed to the public and ridiculed by many.

A few acquaintances hung into my every word, waiting to see what silly complaints I needed to vent out that week, which horny guy I’ve dated, the stupid things I’ve done.

I felt stripped naked, and thought to where a blog purpose lies if one is forced to censor oneself to escape the ire of others who read your work, and unfortunately know you personally.

How can you write about a friend if he/she reads it?

What about your colleagues? Will they judge you even more harshly when they knew what you really thought about them?

People are human, and can one remain rational if somebody else is writing about you?

Regardless, if you blog about your life, would I be able to remain neutral to everybody and everything around me, and be utmost polite?

If you write about what’s happening to you day in and day out, can you remain unemotional, safe, politically correct?

Can you safely not talk about other people close to you if you are really being honest?

I can’t do it.

So after much thought, I’ve decided to give it up.

I was tempted to even delete everything, hoping to backtrack my steps and erase my naked memories.

Why did I want to expose my innermost thoughts to ridicule and judgement?

If people read my words, will they like me? Would they think I was being sincere, cruel, childish, crazy or intelligent?

Did they think of me positively, or hated my guts for writing about them?

It’s hard to be totally honest and write the words as they come to you if you have to be careful about what you write, if people you knew and met on a weekly basis can read about what you really think about outside those polite conversations…

So I made a decision.

I started another blog without preparation.

In the end, though I enjoyed my growing readership and community of friends made who similarly go through the same experiences as I did, I valued my freedom of expression even more.

I savored the feeling of being honest, genuine and the ability of being able to say what I f*cking want, because nobody can see my most private thoughts.

Admittedly though, every single time I start one, I am saddened.

I look at my counter and nobody reads Nameless in Taipei.

Despite my wish of remaining private, there’s a sense of belonging you feel when others read and empathize with what’s happening with you at the present.

However, nobody reads a blog you’ve just started. Not even the search engines who have yet to track back to your blog.

I miss those who used to comment regularly and now wonder where I’ve disappeared to. I wonder what they’ll think when they read my work now at this current address. I miss my community of friends, strangers who read my words and feel my emotions.

Despite my sadness, I feel free.

It’s exhilirating.

I can curse, rant, complain about whatever I want without judgement.

I can write, without my words being forwarded to other people’s mailboxes.

Sure, there will be a time when my blog is again discovered by a mutual acquaintance, and my readership goes up… but that would be enough time for me to yet pick up and leave, to start another blog. And that is for another day.

For now, I am free.

So I bid goodbye to my readers, and transfer to another country where nobody knows me.

Nameless in Taipei — took me three years to keep my anonymity last time. Let’s just see how fast I’ll remain undiscovered again this time.