Hmm. Public versus private blogging...

Well now, isn't this interesting; being so busy tends to interfere with your reading habits from time to time. Here's a case in point...

It's been a couple of months since I looked at a couple of blogs that I marked to be followed on Blogger, and one of them appears to have become private to invited readers only in that space of time. Needless to say, I wasn't invited.

Fair enough, you might say, it's his blog, and he can do with it whatever he wishes. You're absolutely correct, and since I don't actually know the guy personally, not receiving an invitation to read it is not the end of the world. It's irritating, but that's all. It's nothing to get het up over, or scream about from the rooftops (better not do that, they're well slippery this time of year, and the fall's got a real nasty sudden stop at the bottom).

However, this all said, there's a problem. Since it's become a private blog, and I'm not on his white list to read it, I can't reset the administrative feed instruction within my Blogger 'control panel' to unfollow the damn thing. It's a design flaw within Blogger, of course.

So it's sitting there, irritatingly taking up a slot on my 'followed' list, and I can't read whatever he may be writing. It's a shame, really. I'll miss his use of the language, as it was absolutely magnificent: He had a way of being able to capture a moment in time practically poetically, and in such a way as to cause you to empathise with his world view. There aren't many people who can do that, so it's all the more unfortunate that he's restricted access to his blog.

However, think I have a fairly good idea as to why he made his blog private, and it relates to the last entry I was able to read, before he made it private. I won't comment in any detail at all about the subject matter, but I will say that it was unfortunately open to excessive misinterpretation, which for someone with such a good command of the English language was a shame. The upshot though, is that in these Politically Correct (or is that Politically Charged? I think the latter, in this case) times, it only takes one misstep, misspeak, or a poorly-worded publicly-spoken opinion, and the world and it's pet of choice comes along to crush you down to microscopic dust. And I think that's what may have happened here.

So, he's taken what is most likely the most prudent course, that of keeping what he has to say to a rather exclusive audience from that point on. Fair enough, it's his right, and who am I to challenge it, given that it's a right to privacy?

But it does, however, leave that irritating entry on the 'Followed' list that I cannot remove.

And that IS worth running around in ever-decreasing circles and shouting - or in this case writing - about.