I made a pledge to all of you. What’s that? You didn’t know! Yeah, that’s on me. I made the pledge without consulting you. It’s a personal thing with myself than with you, but it is for your benefit. Trust me. Forgive me? Thanks.
The pledge is how I behave in public—aka the readers of my blog, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Social media has made us quite an open society where we share a lot about ourselves in open forums. I’m no different. Longtime readers know quite a lot about me, but nothing that would make it into a tell-all book.
But for everything I share with you, I don’t share everything. This isn’t because I want to hide some things. It’s because it’s not appropriate. And this is where the pledge comes in. My promise to you, my readers, is to entertain you. I write books to entertain. Therefore I use social media to entertain.
I use this space to make you smile or to look at a particular thing from a different perspective or to point out the silliness that surrounds us or some other way to brighten your day. I want that when you check in with me, you leave with something to brighten your day.
Now I know how lame that sounds but there’s enough depressing crap in the world that I don’t think you need me tossing another black cloud on the raging black cloud fire that constitutes the 24hr news cycle.
That means you don’t get to know about my political, religious or social views. I won’t duck them if you ask me about them but I won’t volunteer them. The reason is simple. I’m not interested in getting into a fight with you if you disagree with me. Any time one of my threads descends into pissing match, because the topic goes sideways on me, it’s deleted and any parties who accept other people’s beliefs are gone.
You might think that’s cowardice on my part and you’re welcome to believe that, but my pledge is to entertain and arguing isn’t entertainment. There are plenty other commentators and sites you can go to if you want to talk issues of the days. My pages aren’t it. I hope you understand.
That said. From time to time, I will deviate from my pledge and I will just bitch about something. For that I apologize, but I just hope it was entertaining at the same time.
So there you have it, my intent. I hope you’ve been enjoying it and do let me know how I’ve been doing.
David Magayna
Right on, Brother! I try to do the same thing, and I didn’t put it in the form of a stated pledge either. If someone writes something that I believe they may be misinformed, I may send them something privately, an article refuting their position, or a question asking them to clarify and giving their sources. But life is too short to get into flame wars. Happy is me.
Simon Wood
Sadly we’re in a time where everyone wants to crucify everyone for daring to talk while playing martyr whenever they’re challenged. I just don’t want to bring more gasoline to the bonfire.