For 5 1/2 years, I’ve blogged under a pseudonym. My reason was simple: I wanted to keep my professional and blogging lives separate. Sure, I could tell you my name but refuse to divulge where I worked, but who are we kidding? I never made it a secret that I was a lawyer admitted to practice in California, so any reader who knew my name would have no trouble tracking down my employer. So as a practical matter, if my employer’s identity was to remain a secret, mine needed to, as well. And no, I wasn’t under strict orders from my boss to remain anonymous, but my boss at the time did express considerable relief upon learning that I was, anyway, for the simple reason that no one can think I spoke for a company I hadn’t even identified.

With pseudonymity comes a certain responsibility. Taking my identity off the table carried the implicit promise that my identity is not relevant to what I say. If I blog about the idiocy of secondhand smoke, you as the reader should be entitled to assume that whoever I work for, it ain’t the tobacco industry or anyone else with an obvious interest in the subject, else I would have told you. Conversely, if I do work for an insurance company owned by a mortgage lender, but do not wish to tell you that, then let’s face it, I’m not going to be able to say all that much about mortgages or insurance on this blog. What little I can say about these topics must be information that is publicly known and related to the industry as a whole, rather than to my particular company. Therein lies the problem.

From the time I started this blog in 2002 until I escaped the People’s Republic of Kalifornia in 2006, I worked for a medium-sized insurance company owned by a highly respected mortgage lender. There was little to say of interest on either the topic of mortgages or insurance, and none whatsoever about my company at the time. Due to the sterling reputation it enjoyed, mentioning that company would have smacked of name-dropping, not “full disclosure.” So I didn’t. I just steered clear of the few topics that involved it, most of which I didn’t find newsworthy, anyway. Then, in 2006, I took a job with a major title insurer in Virginia. (The move seemed like a good idea at the time, though it ultimately proved not to be, but that’s neither here nor there.) Again, no problem. Most people had never even heard of title insurance, and I myself saw fit to blog on the topic only twice, both times before I’d entered the industry. So again, my pseudonymity concealed nothing.

All this has since changed, on multiple levels. On the one hand, my current job, like the one I had when I started blogging, is with a medium-sized insurance company owned by a major mortgage lender. On the other, the mortgage industry is under a hell of a lot more scrutiny now than it was then, making it far more likely I’d have reason to blog about issues affecting that industry, notwithstanding the fact that I do less blogging overall. Further, the particular mortgage lender that owns my company is also co-owned by a major automobile manufacturer, whose cars I’d really like to be able to blog about from time to time (if for no other reason, then because that same company manufactured both of the vehicles I currently own). And the other (majority) owner gets is share of news coverage, too.

But those are relatively minor distractions. The major one is that my original employer, Countrywide, has gone from being universally admired (and therefore relatively un-newsworthy) to being widely disparaged by many (including Mr. Hope/Change) as the new Enron. You simply can’t talk about the current election and not talk about Countrywide. I personally think they’ve gotten a bum rap, but no matter. If I praise them, some idjit will accuse me of shilling for my former employer. If I bash them, I’m equally vulnerable to charges that I’m shilling for my current one. And I’m already on the record bashing their soon-to-be owners, so it’s not as though I had a lot of wiggle room in this area, anyway. And if I say anything at all about any particular vehicle, good or bad, I’m either secretly shilling for my employer or covertly undermining it. Screw that.

Given that what was once a feature of my former pseudonymity is now a bug, I think it’s time to officially drop it. I will remind you that I speak only for myself, and not for any company that employs me, has employed me or ever may employ me in the future, but I’m done attempting to make a secret of who I am. While lefties use cool songs to do it, my status as a conservative obligates me to pick a fuddy-duddy song, instead:

The time has come at last
(secret secret, hardly a secret)
To throw away this mask
(secret secret, call that a secret?!)
Now everyone can see
My true identity…
I’m Xrlq! Xrlq! Xrlq! Xrlq!