Kate Olson is a mother of 2 toddlers and lives in rural Wisconsin. She balances motherhood & working from home in a semi-functional fashion - you can read more about Kate on our contributors page. She blogs about education and lots of business/tech stuff at Kate Says . Want more? Read all of Kate’s posts!

…….is the one in the bathroom. Well, ok, there’s a little potty sitting in my living room, but that’s understandable when potty training my kids. Right? Or not, whichever.

My  point is that I do NOT write with a potty mouth, which seems to be rather “out of style” among the mommy blogging masses these days. Let’s just get this out of the way: I do NOT care if YOU swear. Swear away, do as you wish - I’ll still read, laugh, respond. I’m NOT JUDGING YOU.

I’m drawing my OWN line, which includes not swearing online - anywhere. I’m not going to swear on my mommy blog, I’m not going to swear on my professional blog. I’m not going to swear on Facebook or Twitter (feeling like I’m in Green Eggs & Ham) - I’ll listen to you do it, but I’m not joining the crowd.

Why? Well, it all comes down to my goody-two-shoes routine that started when I was born. It’s just who I am, and I need to feel comfortable with with my writing and having it read by the masses. I need to feel ok with my mom, my kids, my grandma, my stepmom, my students, my bosses, my colleagues, my EVERYONE actually reading this stuff. When I first started writing online it felt like I had this private little world that no one in my REAL life ever saw……….now, due to my big mouth, EVERYONE knows where I write and what I say. I meet people at a professional training session, people I’ve never met and people who I was unaware were in my online network, and these people talk to me about my twitter posts and blog posts. You know what? I LOVE that. I also love the fact that I don’t have to be embarrassed about what I wrote. I’m not saying everyone who swears online should be embarrassed, not by any means. I’m just saying that *I* would be mortified if *I* had been.

See, that’s what it all comes down to. Personal comfort level and personal preference. I just know that if my kids stumble upon ANYTHING I post online, I’ll be ok with it. I won’t have to explain why I can use the f-word and they can’t. I won’t have to explain about my sexual history or illegal consumption of things. I also won’t have to explain these things to people I work for, which means a lot to me.

I follow people on twitter and read blogs and have no problem READING profanity, I’m not THAT puritan. I just wonder sometimes if everyone really thinks about every single person that could be reading their work. It all hit home for me one day when someone who I didn’t even realize knew what Twitter was, emailed me with a list of my twitter posts and made some comments about them. That was the moment that I realized for the first time just how public it all is - knock me over the head for being so naive up until that point, but now when I see people criticizing family members and colleagues (friends too!) on Twitter and their blogs, I just cringe.  I want to keep my life and work cringe-free, that’s all.

Swear away, I’ll still read and laugh my tush off.

It’ll just be like those parties where I just watched people do all the naughty stuff I couldn’t bring myself to try.

I’ll still be your friend, just not quite as exciting as you.

I’ll never be the party mom or the fun mom. I’m just going to be a mom. With funny, daring friends.