Last year at Christmas I spent a week with my fiance’s family. It was, to put it lightly, a trying time. Not because his family is horrible, but because they were anxious to get to know me and spend time with me, and I come with my own cocktail of neuroses and personal space issues which makes that difficult for everyone involved. Today I discovered that someone at another blog copied my writing about that week and changed a few details to make it sound like they’d spent a week with Johnny Depp’s family. Not an excerpt, no credit given to me, just blatantly lifted and claimed as their own.

I find it challenging to convey how disgusted I am. I’m absolutely sick over this. I make no money whatsoever from this blog. I accept no ads, I run no sponsored posts, I take no free products in exchange for glowing reviews, I have no affiliate links, and I don’t have a wishlist or a donate button. My good friend Greg is kind enough to host the site for me, so my only costs are the domain name and the time and effort I choose to invest…but I make nothing from it. Why do I invest my time, effort, and money? For several reasons: to improve my writing skills, to entertain, and, most importantly, to remember the things I’ve done.

I love to entertain through stories, silly pictures, and videos. I’ve been doing so online since 2004. I love it when someone takes the time to comment and tell me that I’ve made them laugh, or smile, or retch a little. I won’t cure cancer or put a rocket on the moon, but I do have my voice. In its own way, it’s a compliment that someone enjoyed my work so much that they wished they had written it…but it’s another thing entirely to take it and put their name on it, to steal my voice.

What makes this theft particularly vulgar to me is that it’s not just a joke they took, but my lived experience. It’s not just a funny story to me; it’s a difficult experience that I turned into a funny story and is thus a much deeper part of me than just a simple joke. To have someone else claim credit for the story without having lived through it makes me feel deeply ill.

In the past, I’ve thought it was a little ridiculous and self-involved to post a copyright notice on my blog, as if there was anything here that was worthy of being copied…but I included one nonetheless in the footer. I’m obviously not writing here for money, but I do want the credit for the things I’ve said, and I will not stand for someone else taking it. Not when I lived it. Not when I wrote it. My work, though published online for free, is not a free-for-all, and is not free of copyright. Before today, I wouldn’t have thought it would ever be necessary to state that outright.

*Update: Since this was published, the referenced post has been removed.