Glad to be guest-blogging here at SMITH. I’m Jeffrey Yamaguchi, and I run a site called 52Projects.com. The site is all about projects and project-making. I stray into personal areas, such as a love of the music of John Denver, but for the most part, I don’t get too personal. But recently, I got sick and had to have some medical tests done, and after it was all said and done, I really wanted to write the story. But did I want to post the story on my site? That I was not so sure about. For the first time, I really thought about the lines I draw in terms of what I would put on my site. So that’s what I wanted to blog about here at SMITH — the site that celebrates the fact that everyone has a story. I totally agree with that sentiment. What I’ll spend some time blogging about here is the stories we do not tell. Or think about not telling, or worry about telling, or tell and then wonder if the story should not have been put out there…

I did end up posting the story — You can read it here: “A Trip to the Urologist, Or, Damn That Prostate.” Before I did post it, I shared the piece with a few friends and colleagues, and they all said go for it. That was encouraging, and yet I was very nervous hitting that “Publish” button. In my mind, there was going to be all kinds of reaction… But there wasn’t. Still, I believe it’s a story that will be helpful, even it features perhaps “too much information.”

Here’s an excerpt, to show an example:

Did I mention that the nurse was quite attractive? I’m noting this not because it was some kind of turn-on (I didn’t just feel asexual, I felt anti-sexual during my time at the urologist’s office), but because it seemed to make the whole situation much more embarrassing. I know this makes me sound like a pig, but I would have rather had some old school, grey-haired grandmothery-type in the room. A grown man naked from the waist down with his penis shrunk down well below the “I was in the pool” level, whimpering, “Will it hurt?” — Now that’s the last way you want to be seen in front of a young, gorgeous woman. Get Nurse Marge in the room, STAT!

Any bloggers or writers out there who have written stories or posted blog entries where they really weren’t sure that it was a story they should tell? Stories that you’ve held back on? Comments are welcome.