Another One Bites the Dust

Via White Coat’s Call Rooom, I wanted to mention the demise of Weird Nursing Tales:

After nearly 20 years on the internet, Weird Nursing Tales passed away.

Weird Nursing Tales died on February 7, 2012 after it was reported to Administration that the true author was an employee of the Hospital.

Yesterday, February 7, “The Author” sat in a conference room in the Human Resources department with his Administrative Director and the Vice-President of HR to discuss this “discovery.”

After a brief, 15 minute meeting, the plug was pulled and Weird Nursing Tales died, without so much as a gasp.

Family was at the bedside.

Weird Nursing Tales is survived by an only child, “ED Sing-a-Long.”

Weird Nursing Tales may be gone, but Tex is still out there.

And it is gone, gone,  gone. Even cached pages are hard to find — though nothing ever truly dies on the Interwebs. I only hope Tex downloaded all of his work before deleting the blog.

Anonymity has its downside. It’s tricky. The protection you think it affords you may be more apparent than real. No one’s ever truly anomymous, though I think I have been as careful and artfully misdirective as possible. Sometimes when you’re anonymous, it looks like you’re doing something illicit or wrong, and the consequences, as illustrated above, can be disastrous. I’m actively considering of crossing over from the pseudonymous state to the whatever the opposite of pseudonym is — just for this very reason. As Nerdy Nurse says in the comments of White Coat’s post:

This is one of the many reasons that I actually put my blog on my resume. I no longer wanted to blog in fear. I wanted to own it and be proud of and work for an organization that understood and respected me for it.

At any rate, we can all hope Tex will find another outlet for his talents. And that the administrative beating given by the nasty HR types wasn’t too severe.