I'm not a private person.

And that might not come as a shock, reading this blog entry on the internet – and I’ll probably cross post this a number of places including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, having a number of choices to choose from, either to opt-in or out. The hits will likely be under the thousand mark, at least initially and if anyone actually sees this, it will be because I dragged them over here.

I’m not paying for a service to “lead people to my site,” I don’t make money by selling ads or hoping to increase my internet presence by doing this and there generally is little motivation for doing this other than just putting the words down because to me – they matter. If I get paid in any currency for this, it’s for the simple pleasure of knowing someone liked what I wrote enough to get to the end of post.

I get paid money to do other things, for other people. It includes writing, but there it’s a means to an end. I do it well, I do it consistently and people are grateful for it.

But I don’t come over here and throw words down every day, hoping to get attention. That does not mean I’m a private person who never speaks out – quite the opposite.

I grew up under some very specific conditions, and it left marks.

Ever been inside the Staples Center in Los Angeles? The capacity for that venue is over 18,000 seats, hovering around 20,000 with the high water mark being 20,820 people in one place, at once time.

To find that many people in or near the town I was born in, you would have had to cull a radius of over 500 miles – and that is every man, woman and child. Put them in one place. That’s the distance between Los Angeles and San Francisco, laid out in one long line. You’d have to search that far to find as many people as you would find one night at the Staples Center, near me while I growing up.

I was born in a very small town, so small we didn’t even have a McDonald’s in it until I was in high school. So small there was only one school district, one junior high school, one high school. There was one junior college, and the nearest university was over thirty miles away. The only radio signal you could pick up was AM radio, and that rather badly – so I didn’t have much access to contemporary music, and completely floored people when I didn’t know much about progressive rock until I was in college. I know a ton about big band music – but very little about heavy metal. Cable television didn’t happen at all until I was out of elementary school, and satellites belonged to NASA and that’s all the access (ie, NONE) I’d have to them.

Very few people were my age too. In high school, the median age was 65. (Today, it’s 39.) Growing up, people upwards of 75 were still behind cash registers, shopping in the grocery stores, running small businesses and driving on the roads (ghad help us). They were the majority then, and I did mention my depth in big band music? I listened to as many 78rpm discs as I did 45rpm ones, my musical introduction was equal parts Beatles and George Gershwin. Baby boom? Not as far as I knew.

There was no internet. Ham radio was the stuff of dreams, being out of reach for a single parent family with four children – long distance phone calls were made very rarely, only at need and never by you. I remember when I discovered I could call information for free and get phone numbers for people in other states, and as a teenager that meant I was actually talking to operators living near them. I remember listening for the first time to people speaking with mid-Atlantic, Southern accents and being absolutely rapt. I couldn’t find enough addresses fast enough. Was I actually able to call anyone? Nope.

But I was actually able to talk to someone who didn’t live next door to me, and that was huge.

That, plus a professor in my first years of college who insisted I develop a “nose for news” practically ensured I would never be bored with people. New people? More people? That meant new perspectives, experiences and interests. Maybe someone who was a little more like me, who couldn’t get enough science fiction (but really never got Star Wars). I was the only Star Trek fan I knew until a copy of Star Trek Lives! fell into my hands in high school, and I contacted the Star Trek Welcommittee. I found other people, all over the world and I could write to them (and they would write back!). I started corresponding with other writers, found someone who lived near me willing to take me with them to conventions. This tiny little place I’d lived in finally got bigger than the ten square miles I could cover on foot or with my bicycle.

Well prepared for nobody to be like me. That was fine! Who are you, and what are you like?

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it was the saving of me.

And being immersed in science fiction first – this is the community of the mid to late seventies, in full flower of the sexual revolution, speculative and as far out there as possible. If I wanted a place to experiment with a different point of view, there weren’t many places that would have encouraged that, insisted on it frankly, than that one.

I doubt I noticed. To me, these were the people I knew and the person my mother trusted with my teenage person had recently been a Catholic nun. I had been schooled on what One Didn’t Do with strangers by no other than Marion Zimmer Bradley (and that’s a story for another day) – if I’d been sheltered, I certainly didn’t stay that way past sixteen.

Who are you. What are you interested in. Share? Is okay?

And this is what I think. You?

I had no reason to keep anything hidden. One, I had nothing to hide and two, you don’t ask (or state your position), you don’t get anything back.

Today, this combination gets me in dutch on social media like nobody’s business. See, I really love people. And I have no reluctance to discuss anything. New people are like grab bags to me – you can’t tell what’s inside until you open them up, and while you might not love everything you get, you never know what you’re going to get, and that’s fun. Real fun. If you’re willing to deal with whatever you find, it’s no gamble at all. Imagine the possibilities.

Politically, I’m a moderate. I probably have the reputation over on Facebook of being that person who never bans or stops trolls from being…well, trolls. Frankly, most of the time I report or share something over there just to see what discussion develops. (But I do use those moderator tools, you might just not see it. You start out with epithets, you are likely going to get deleted.)

I am grateful unto death for Facebook, frankly. I have found so many people I thought I’d lost forever.

I’ve been called out “why did you SAY that?” and the best I can offer is a blank stare. I said it because I wanted to air it, open the floor for discussion, take your pick. But never specific to a person, unless to go “hey, look – did you see this?”

Somebody told me this sort of thing can be taken as public shaming. I’m afraid that kind of intent wouldn’t be accidental on my part, and who does that anyway? I guess you could try that on me, but I’m well aware that any opinion held by someone else about me – is really more about them than me to begin with. More so, nobody can insult or shame me without my permission – and calling me names on Facebook only gets your post deleted. Eh.

Public shaming. One can person can do that. You gotta be kidding me, but okay – taken under consideration.

I am not a private person, I guess. I have no trouble talking about anything, and really – I want to talk about everything, even the things I don’t agree with. How else will I ever gain an understanding for what’s behind it?

When I think of things that went unsaid, the things kept hidden and the secrets kept over the years, it only firms my resolve to have as little of them as possible now and in the future. I come from a background littered with addicts, remember. There’s no safety in silence. Lotta crazy there, but little safety.

I’ve never gotten anything good by keeping my mouth shut. I have gotten everything good, beneficial and amazing in my life by opening my mouth and saying what was on my mind. You’re not going to take that away from me.

I have a mad, passionate love affair with the whole world out there, the same way I loved my kid before he was born. I didn’t know who he was, and didn’t care. I wanted to see what was under the hood, what he’ll show me as time passes and take my chances on the outcome. He may hate my guts – that’s fine! Can you imagine what else might come to pass?

How am I ever going to know if I’m not willing to listen? And to listen, I have to speak up.

When someone tells me not to discuss a thing in public, I recall I have my family, my friends and my way of life(which is damn sweet, by the way) by engaging people in public spaces – everything good that’s ever happened to me. And you’re telling me I’m wrong – baby, that rage is genuine. I really feel sorry for you if you think any of that is intended for any other reason, including punitive ones.

And that’s what I’ll remember.