Opinions, Privacy issues, and Writing

I've written ever since I was eight, but didn't take it seriously until Ninth Grade and Mrs. VanAtta's English class -- I wrote poetry and people liked it!  After all, I spent most of Middle School relatively friendless -- didn't have any close buddies that I hung around with -- I spent a lot of time reading.  I was determined to be on the school newspaper in High School.

But when I got into High School, the school newspaper was dying. I don't remember all of the particulars anymore, but somehow I connected with an old friend from Elementary school who drifted away -- we were determined that I we needed a school paper.  Somehow, one or the other of us persuaded Mrs. Longanecker to be our advisor, and Sue found a few other people, and the local paper was persuaded to print the articles citywide.  The Wildcat Weekly was reborn.  We wrote articles, Mrs. Longanecker corrected them, and I learned, more or less, how to write for the newspaper.

After a year, I wanted to do more. Erma Bombeck, the humorist, was popular at the time, so I started a humor column under a pseudonym.  Not one person realized who wrote the column until the May before I graduated, and I heard, from my Dad, that even some of his coffee buddies got a laugh out of it. 

And then, in my Senior year, I wrote an opinion column.  After all this time, it doesn't make a difference what my opinion was; the principal hated it.  I got called to the Principal's office for the first time in my life, and the advisor, Barb Erickson (now Stutesman) got in trouble.  (I'm giving the principal a pass; it was his first year as Principal, and I suspect now he felt he had to show his authority.)

My first encounter with the power of opinions.

Fast forward twenty to thirty years:  I've worked at Huddlestun Lumber Company for twenty-five years, and at McLellan and Strohm Accounting for a little over ten years.  I'm grateful to both for hiring me and giving me a living.

But.

As a writer, it drives me nuts.  You see, we have customers at Huddlestun Lumber Company, and we have clients at McLellan and Strohm.  They are all very important.  In addition, there's an implied privacy at Huddlestun Lumber and a very strict privacy issue at McLellan and Strohm's, very similar to the medical world's HIPAA policy.  I like my jobs, and I refuse to embarrass either place.

I also have an opinion of various things that happen around town and the townships.  Can I express that opinion freely?  Not really.  I know that opinions will offend people -- clients and customers -- even when no offense is meant, and I don't want to do that.  And these are some very nice people.

If you look at my website, you'll see a series of columns about a fictional town named River Creek.   I wrote those over ten years ago, and this was my way of commenting about the city at that point.  I keep thinking about resurrecting it -- in fact, I'm planning to insert stories around these "articles."  But, here's my dilemma -- do I write about current things?  Do I dare? 

Is my life defined by being a bookkeeper or being a writer?

What do I choose?