At first, I thought it would be a great idea to have a personal blog. After all, I’ve kept journals off and on for years. My journals don’t really record all that much in the way of deeply personal things; someone finding them would probably just be bored with the reading. Much of it pertains to ideas and thoughts that are best labeled “philosophical.”

No surprise there, as I majored in philosophy.

The point is that my journals, while personal, aren’t deeply revealing (except insofar as they reveal the “philosophical” things I consider). Sometimes, too, I share what I’ve written with friends and this often leads to fun discussions where I get to learn what they think on the same topics.

And so I thought that maintaining a personal blog could be even more enjoyable and would not be a big deal.

What I’ve found, however, is that because of my work as a criminal defense attorney, I’m not as willing to keep up a personal blog. It’s enough to provide fodder for prosecutors, judges and potential jurors through my specific thoughts on criminal justice — or the lack thereof — and the criminal legal system — or the lack thereof — on my law blogs. I don’t need to add into the mix that someone may not appreciate some of my more generalized thoughts on life.

Still, I live in an area — Fresno County, California — where I find it difficult to meet people whose company I enjoy. All of us like to occasionally hang out with people with whom we don’t perpetually need to defend our world-view, or justify our most basic thoughts about “the good life.” Blogging is something that I discovered, years ago, opened up the possibility of having discussions with a range of people, some of whom disagree with me, to be sure, but many of whom don’t.

At Unspun#&8482;, for example, I wrote about social and political issues. I largely stopped after becoming an attorney. I miss the community of commenters I encountered there, both the good (people who are still friends to this day) and the not-so-good (people like “Nat” who could not conduct a discussion without personal attacks). I’ve even thought frequently about resurrecting Unspun#&8482;. After all — and even though I voted for him — our current President provides much to debate and criticize (and even perhaps a few things to praise).

Another thing that has held me back from building my personal blog on this website is the thought that I may, one day, simply take this site down. The things I write — the good, the bad, the poorly-written — have some weird hold over me once written. I hate to see them go away. That’s why Unspun#&8482; remains online to this day, even though I haven’t written anything there since early 2009. So I don’t like the idea of writing here when I know I may very well just erase it all someday. (One reason I might erase it is that if I decide to practice a different kind of law, other than criminal defense, my other websites aren’t easily adaptable to that; I may need a “generic” web URL to use for a non-criminal-defense-oriented website.)

Finally, there’s the whole idea that there’s already a Rick Horowitz — and not a very pleasant one, if you ask me — who is somewhat famous, at least in some circles. I have people mistaking me for him often enough as it is. If I try to redeem the name, to connect it with less idiotic and thoughtless ideas, it could just confuse people. After all, that other Rick Horowitz has been around so long that it would be hard for people to understand if suddenly someone named “Rick Horowitz’ started to sound intelligent and sane.

So I’m not sure what’s going to happen here with this blog. At the moment, when I want to write on a more personal note, I journal offline. But the more I think about things, the more I wonder if it wouldn’t be fun to start writing about non-law things again, on occasion, and see if I can’t reconnect with some of my non-law online friends of the past.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

In one sense — at least so it seems to me — all blogging is personal.  To the extent that it’s written by individuals who are expressing their opinions, how can it really be otherwise?  But the blogs I maintain for my Fresno-based criminal defense practice and my more generalized criminal-law-oriented blog, can be considered “less” personal in that they primarily deal with legal issues relating to the practice of criminal law.

In “the old days,” I maintained a blog called Unspun™, which was more personal, but mostly contained political and social writing.  I started that blog in the dark ages of the slide to hell that was introduced to television news by Fox.  Bill O’Reilly liked to fantasize that his post-modern attempt at dismantling the United States was actually a “no spin zone.”  Of course, O’Reilly is nothing but spin.  So, in reaction against that, I decided to create a website where, I hoped, things would be unspun.  And I researched most of the articles I wrote for that site fairly thoroughly.

I always felt odd about posting more personal articles on Unspun™, or articles relating to non-political/non-social issues, such as my musings on anthropology, cognitive science, or other topics that did not fit my “vision” for Unspun™.

My name is common enough that several other well-known people carry it themselves.  At least one can probably be considered “fairly famous.”  And this, I felt, created a problem for me in writing a blog under my own name.  I didn’t want to be equated with the more famous dude, primarily because he seems to me to be something of an idiot.  And a hypocritical sell-out.

Network Solutions, like the great dope domain pusher that it is, recognized long ago that I had a penchant for registering domain names, even if I didn’t yet know what I’d use them for — or that I would use them at all!  Consequently, I was always getting these tempting offers: “Register RICKHOROWITZ.COM now!  This is your last chance before your nose falls off! Get it before someone else does, maybe even that idiot who shares your name is and is more famous!”  Okay, so they didn’t actually say he was more famous.

(Here’s a spot of irony for you:  I own several domain names I haven’t fully decided what to do with, including some I’ve used extensively in the past, such as techstop.com, and some I’ve more recently acquired such as MrConstitution.com, which has never really been put to use yet.  But in “the old days” of the commercial Internet Service Providers, circa 1993, two of which I worked for, I remember sitting around with fellow geekazoids and laughing at someone who had just bought some “stupid” domain name like “furniture.com” or something like that.  Boy!  Did I miss that boat!  Back then, you could buy domains, if I’m recalling correctly, for a one-time fee of $50.  I remember hearing once that the guy who bought lawyers.com for $50 later sold it for a couple of million.  (I don’t know if that’s true; it’s what I’d heard.  Lawyers.com is today owned by the same people who torture attorneys with Lexis-Nexis products.))

Anyway, as regards the tempting offers from Network Solutions regarding a domain with my own name, eventually, I caved in.  You can only wave junk in front of a junkie for so long before you get him, after all.  Everyone knows when it comes to the Internet, resistance is futile.  And the sooner you give in, the sooner your blog content will be disseminated.

But I am an attorney by trade (primarily, and so far it is a trap from which there seems to be no escape).  This creates a problem in maintaining a “personal” blog.  It’s not just a legal matter, what with freedom of speech being actually dead for attorneys as far as some courts are concerned.  It’s also a political matter: if you blog “the wrong stuff” you can scare off potential clients, alienate jurors who ignore the judge’s instructions and hunt for and read your blogs during trial and perhaps even cause your colleagues to question your sanity.  Though I’m not sure I really give much of a hoot about what my colleagues might think.

I can’t say that I’ve actually made a decision about the best way to handle this dilemma.  Blogging is easier than journaling.  And I do enjoy the occasional conversation it generates: one of the drawbacks of being a private attorney — a “solo” — is, well, having to be solo so often.

So while I’m trying to figure this one out, I guess I’m just going to have to try to exercise a little care in what I say here on my “personal” (but very public) blog.  And hope that people visiting the site will recognize that there is a difference between whatever personal views I may express on this site and the way I conduct myself as a private attorney and business person.