Blog Guilt - Is It A Thing?

Something I didn't mention,

Do any other bloggers have blog guilt?

A couple of weeks ago I wanted to write my weekly Reasons 2B Cheerful post and I felt that I couldn't do it without first mentioning the fatal shooting of 11 worshipers in a synagogue in Philadelphia. Obviously that didn't belong in a R2BC post so I delayed the post and wrote about this and other tragedies that occurred that week.

Today I wanted to write a Tuesday Tidbits post. I don't often have funny things that DD says or does to write about now that she's growing up. But a couple of nights ago something funny happened and of course I thought of blogging about it. However, I'm still feeling guilty that I didn't even mention the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass) that was last week.

Here I am with a platform that's read by 300 people a day and I didn't write about the Kristallnacht Pogroms. It's was the 80th anniversary, not the 77th or 79th but a significant number that should be commemorated. On the night of November 9th 1938, all over Nazi Germany (including Austria and Sudetenland) Jewish shops were vandalized, looted and torched, Jewish families were herded into the town squares where they were attacked and humiliated, 300.000 Jewish men were arrested and deported to prison camps, Jewish books and and ritual items were burned, and 1400 synagogues were desecrated and torched. Ninety-one Jews were murdered.

This was the turning point for Jews in Nazi Germany. Whereas previously, many had thought the Nazi threat would blow over, now they knew that they were in mortal danger. For most of them, this realization came too late and they were trapped. Some of those who did manage to leave thought they would be safe in France, Belgium, Holland, and other Western European countries. Only those who made it to England and the Americas were spared the horrors of The Holocaust.

On Sunday was Armistice Day, 11/11, when we remember the fallen soldiers from both world wars. My facebook feed was full of my friends' photos of their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents in uniform. Proud and sad at the same time of the tremendous, often ultimate, sacrifices made by their families. Me? 300 readers and I wrote nothing.

Last night and today Southern Israel has been under rocket fire from Hamas in the Gaza strip. People have died, houses have been destroyed. Schools in the south were cancelled today and until further notice. My friends who live there have spent over 24 hours no more than 15 seconds from their safe rooms (rooms of reinforced concrete) or bomb shelters.

The country is talking about whether we are heading for another war against Hamas. Soldier reservists are waiting to hear if they will be called up. A school in Jerusalem has announced that it will take in any children from the south who want/need to get away and find them families to stay with. And that's just the one school I heard about. Many friends have offered to host families under fire who just need a break from it all.

With all that going on I just can't write about DD's funny sayings.

A couple of weeks ago a friend marked the Yarhzeit (anniversary of death) of her husband who died far too young. She asked that we all do a Mitzvah for Michael (a good deed). I immediately thought, what a good name for a blog post, and I had every intention of writing about it. I did two mitzvot (pl.) during that week. I can't write about either of them. Both were good deeds for specific people who either read this blog or know people who do. To write about how these 'poor' souls needed my help would humiliating for them if they found out.

And there was one mitzvah, another one, that I was able to do and I could've written about it here. It was a general offer that was taken up by a complete stranger, via a facebook group. No one would know who the beneficiary is. But it doesn't feel right to brag about good deeds. Either you do them or you don't, but to tell everyone how wonderfully you behaved... nah, not cool.

So instead of writing blog posts every few days, I've been consumed with guilt about things I'm not mentioning and would feel guilty about mentioning other events that happened. I'm wrestling with the notion that a relatively successful blog (successful in that it's been going almost eight years and people read it) brings certain obligations and responsibilities.

I could say, "I don't write about politics," but that wouldn't be real as politics concern me. I've grown out of cute stories about motherhood, or at least DD has grown past it. I want this blog to be about real life but my real life involves others who don't always want to be blogged about. Sometimes it's hard to find a satisfactory middle ground.

Blog Guilt. Is it a thing?