Stop, Drop and Blog

Val at FireFighter Wife has said it once before and, as of late, I think it needs repeating: Be mindful what you are blogging about your firefighter’s job.

There’s a reason that the tagline of my blog is “writing and photographing the family side of fire life.” I am not blogging the fire life. I write and share photos about our family, which involves being part of the fire department. There are very specific boundaries that spouses and partners need to remember when they are sharing things with the blogosphere.

Things I Do Share:

• Photos I take from trips to the fire department.
• Struggles and benefits we encounter with fire scheduling.
• What it’s like to miss our firefighter when he’s gone for days at a time.
• The fear I experience as a fire wife.
• Jokes, funny tidbits and other things that do not name specific people or would not otherwise get people in trouble.
• My reaction to big local fires, big national fires and the like.
• Stories that embarrass me, not my husband.

And of course, I write about the fire stuff I find — books, clothes, bedding, toys. And I write about the boys. And I write about me, which is a whole other post that I’m working on for sometime in the near future.

Things I Never Share:

• Specifics about a local fire unless I’m sharing that tips are needed to aid in the investigation.
• Inner workings of the fire department.
• Arguments between firefighters, whether that involves management or not.
• Beefs with city government.
• Specifics about rescue calls. (HIPAA, anyone?)

I do tweet when I know they’re going out on a fire. I find that my online fire family will sit up with me for awhile — as it’s always in the middle of the night, isn’t it? — to help calm my fears and remind me to go back to bed. I tweeted when there was the mayday call with our men last year, but I did not share the specifics of what came about department wise afterward.

And I won’t.

The truth is that my words can be used against my husband. If he tells me something in confidence, and I blab it to the whole Interwebz, he could lose his job. If I share a funny story that may embarrass another firefighter on his shift, that firefighter may get angry with my husband, causing unnecessary tension which can be deadly during a fire. If I trash talk our city government on this blog — the very city government who pays my husband — I’m putting his job security at risk. If I’m sitting here whining about how mean fellow firefighters are to my husband because he’s new, he’s only going to get razzed more. (He’s not; that’s an example. They have a new guy to razz now.)

There’s a balance in fire life blogging. I try to focus on us, as a family, more than my husband, as a firefighter. And I never, ever put words in his mouth. He has chosen not to blog publicly anymore because of his career, though other firefighters do it and do it well. He is content to read their blogs, read my blog, read fire spouse blogs, read some of his other favorites and send me “inappropriate” someecards.

By respecting the boundaries of what I can and cannot share, I respect not just the local fire department and the integrity of firefighting as a career, but I also respect my husband. This is his dream job. If I wrote something that caused him to lose that dream? I’d never forgive myself. He deserves the respect. And so does your firefighter.