Every article you read on JoeUser was written by an actual human being.

Every comment you make on JoeUser will be read by an actual human being.

And every article you publish on JoeUser will be potentially viewed by a lot of people, all of whom will have their own opinions about your work, formed through life experiences that you can never share.

Your readers may be from another generation. There may be vast cultural and spiritual differences. Your blog may be your ‘private’ space, but when you post publicly, you are inviting comment from people who don’t know you personally and are unaware of your circumstances.

It took me a long time to get used to those facts – and sometimes I still occasionally find it frustrating to be misunderstood or ‘taken the wrong way’. But it’s worth it to have the opportunity to reach an audience that would be unavailable to me any other way.

Blogging has improved my sense of what I should and shouldn’t say. It has taught me a great deal about the importance of respecting the thoughts of others.

It has given me pause to think on many occasions about opinions opposed to mine. It has without a doubt increased my tolerance for accepting viewpoints that differ from my own, and it has taught me that I alone am responsible for every word I write.

And for those reasons, I’ll ‘bite my tongue’ every time before I’ll judge someone I know next to nothing about.