When life becomes personal.

We all have vices. Of one kind or another. As a writer, maybe my biggest vice. Is that of writing about friends and acquaintances and strangers. I sort of rob them of their privacy.  Which could be construed as rude. Though I try not to look at it that way. Because I earned a living. As a newspaper reporter.  I delved into the lives of people that I wrote about. Some willingly. But other times against their wishes. I wrote about people. In positive and negative ways. It was called objectivity. But I always knew that pure objectivity is impossible. Life is far more subjective than objective. I learned. That in interviewing people. They tended to open up. Far more often. When I opened up, too. We shared our personal lives. That’s the nature of real life. It’s best. When life becomes personal. --Jim Broede