I was terribly ostracized in sixth grade, completely isolated. I took the whole thing fairly stoically. I read a lot and stopped trying to make eye contact or exchange words with anyone. Some kids were mean. Most just ignored me. Several months after we graduated, one of the moms, I think it was Ms. Kahane, saw me at the park. Her son had been popular. She recognized me and said hi, and somehow got around to asking me if I missed sixth grade and everyone I'd gone to elementary school with for years. If I remember right, I told her “No. It was horrible and everyone was mean to me. I don’t miss anything about it.”* (I didn't tell her that her son had been a full participant in my shunning.) So yeah. I do understand not wanting to go back. Back wasn’t all good.
See, now, this story and your post make me want to go in two different directions.
Let's try the first direction:
The stuff you say, where you worry about people's perception of you. I don’t get that. This stuff:
“a sense that who I really was inside was uncool and unambitious and unworthy according to the rules of the [law school] world”
“My ambivalence about this question is now officially Odd.”
I really don’t understand that worry. I think it was burned out of me in sixth grade. I do not give a fuck what people think of me. I don't care on the downside and I don't care on the upside. I don't care. It wouldn't occur to me to wonder what people in my class in law school thought of my goals. They aren't me, so I don't care. If they went as far as telling me that my goals are wrong, I would care enough to tell them to suck me. But I would never actually entertain doubt based on that. Other people having opinions about my preferences for having children?** Shockingly irrelevant. The names of distant stars are more important to me. I don't care. They aren't me and their lives aren’t changed by my choices in having children. It is unlikely that I'd notice, but if it got through to me, I'd forget it by the time I wondered whether we have enough arugula in the garden for a salad tonight. I just don't care.
This shows up other ways. I don't care what clothing I wear because I don't care what impression I make because I don't care what strangers think. I have finally honed my wardrobe into entirely bland, but that's out of an intellectual decision, not because I care in my heart. I also don't notice praise. It never sinks in. I'm stunned when I realize that people have been paying attention to me and pay heed in meetings, because I didn't care enough to notice that was building. It made me a resilient blogger, because I laughed when people hated me and I ignored when people fawned on me. I don’t care about either. (I hated when my message got twisted. I care a lot about information transfer. But I don't care about strangers' opinion of me. (This fades some at the extreme ends and I do care what friends think of me. But it holds for most of the middle ground of blogging.)) I think this blind spot, held deep and strong, came from giving up in sixth grade. I knew everyone's opinion of me and it sucked. It wasn't going to get better, so my only option was to stop caring.
From this perspective, your awareness of other people's opinions seems like a big burden. You spend bandwidth and energy on it? It adds a constraint to your decisionmaking? That looks tiring. Is there a way to take that load off you? My opinion of you and whatever you choose is that it is brilliant and perfect. If you must consider an outside opinion, couldn't you just use that one? I wish you could just not care, but the only way I know to achieve that is a year of ostracism, That trade-off isn't worth it.
Now, back to the fork in the road and the other direction:
Strangely, for all that I don't want to re-connect with my past or join Facebook, I really do track the persons from my life as closely as public internet allows. I google old classmates every few months. I keep track if I can. I like getting news about marriages and babies. I have to say, I also like that Facebook and Twitter are taking some of that function away from blogging. I think people want very much to say how they're feeling in the moment and I think they want to relay their news. But that was never my favorite part of blogs. I've always liked blogs that add synthesis and tell truths that take more work to express. I like the blog access to arcane expertise.
We talked about what we wanted this blog to be, and one of the things we discussed was valuing the blog form of media. It is too easy for me to dismiss the essays I put up, the ones that show a small piece of what I know about how we move water. Whatever. It is just a blog post, without good citations or an institution backing it. But the aggregate of those posts is a body of work. It happens to be a format I'm good at, and I haven't taken to another as readily. So maybe instead of thinking that I'm not good at reporting or writing academic articles or whatever it is that blogs aren't quite as good as, I should instead value what a blog is and does.
One of those things is the longer stories and insights that you write so beautifully. I'm happy if we keep writing those here, on whatever schedule suits our urge to write. I think we're both over our first blogs and that greedy need for numbers. We can wait between posts until something moves you or me to tell a longer story, lingering in the details. I'm writing at the policy blog now, but I remember how I liked to go back and forth between policy and personal on my old blog. The pendulum will always swing and I will always want to write the other again. Perhaps from time to time, Tweeting will feel inadequate for the thoughts coalescing in your mind and you'll look around for a pink and red blog to write on. Perhaps I'll just want a place that I imagine is warmer and cozier and just friends talking about the worlds they love.
But really, this is up to us. Even more really, I'm not trying to win the blogs any more. There is no external prize, so we should do this in exactly the manner that makes it a gift. If it is a burden, we should stop.
*People really shouldn't ask me how things are. I nearly never complain about things, but that doesn't mean I always like them. If I do, I'm all enthusiastic about saying so. If I say nothing, my opinion is likely bad. I'll say why if asked directly, but life would be better if people would respect my discretion and not press for details they aren't gonna enjoy hearing.
**Sugar, it isn't really that odd to not want children. I know lots of people who don't and will cheerfully say so. Then everybody envies their clothing with no stains and ability to take long trips and the conversation moves forward. You're in a large minority (a majority in Europe), not a unique situation.