Introduction to a guest post-
When you “out” your blog, to those who are part of your day-to-day life, or those within your own family, you run into potential problems. Such as those who read specifically for gossip to use for evil motives. Regardless of how it is presented to others, when you take a post from a year or more back and use it to strike out and hurt others, basically by taking it out of context, it’s wrong.

Periodically either Kevin or I will post a blog on the pitfalls of an outed blog. Yes, it can be used for good. Families who live across the country or in other states have a way of keeping abreast of your life. This can be a wonderful thing, and enhance family relations. Or, it can be used as a weapon. We have seen within our personal experience a little of both.

I have no intentions of allowing this kind of conduct to inhibit what I write. What I write is what I feel on any given day. Some of my very early posts were far more scattered, my direction for this blog unclear. Possibly they still are. My blog is a collection of me, my life, my family and those I interact with, as well as people I meet who enjoy this hobby. In the beginning, blogging was a way for me to flex my sense of creativity, purely for my own entertainment. It seems some people choose to distort my blog for ulterior motives. It’s irrelevant whether such conduct comes out of spite, jealousy, anger, or as Kevin mentions in this post, a perceived slight. As all of us who blog are familiar with the many pitfalls to an outed blog. This is one.


Guest Post by Kevin

While my bride composes her thoughts and all our wonderful memories from Hawaii, she asked me if I had anything on my mind that would make a good post. I’m not sure how good this will be, and I rely on you, her wonderful readers, to let us both know.
But I’ve been thinking a lot about instigators lately.
You know who they are and what they are. You find them in your family, your workplace, and your social set. They are the termites of human relationships, always looking for ways to eat away at your existing relationships while posing as your friend.
In your presence, instigators will appear all full of love for you, perhaps overly so. They fawn all over you. But when they are not in your presence, they quickly begin spinning with their mischief. They will love to gossip, about confidences you have given them, or things they have discovered about you. They will dig deep into your past, read pages and pages of your past posts in your blogs, with all the zeal and single-mindedness that Kenneth Starr brought to bear for four miserable years during the Clinton administration, focused solely on bringing you down in little and big ways.
They usually don’t need much motivation. Sometimes, just a small perceived slight is all they need to get their evil juices flowing. Sometimes, they need no real inspiration per se. It’s like that well-told story of the scorpion who asked some kind of mammal to ferry him across the river and when they got to the middle of the stream, the scorpion stung the poor animal. When the animal asked, why did you sting me, the scorpion replied, “Because that’s who I am.”
Instigators are never so truthful. They remain cunning until or unless they are caught. But they almost never are. As my wife once said about conniving people, they are like snot: You can’t pin them down because they are too slippery.
Hence, they will go to relatives or friends and point out things you have done, twisting them to make it appear as if you have betrayed them in some way. The wounded relative or friend will never tell you about it, often because the instigator has befriended them and the wounded person does not want to betray them. So the hurt festers, and the instigator can feel satisfied about accomplishing a mission of no value to anyone.
My bride and I know how to handle instigators: We cut them off, and leave them no room to move. Without the juice of gossip, they wither and die.
But be warned: instigators are clever. They do their evil work in darkness, and it often is hard to catch them in the act.
The funny thing is, well-grounded souls need not worry too much: If your relationships are truly solid, instigators’ attacks will be repelled like an arrow hitting steel.
I hope these words will inspire some dialogue about instigators. Share with 3T and me your experiences with instigators and how you dealt with them. It might help someone out there who is simply flustered by the acts of these pitiful creatures.