Will This Blog Kill My Dream?

When I first started down the path of trying to become a professional writer, I honestly thought my target audience would be adults. Because of this I published dark adult driven poetry books, and started this blog with adults in mind. Once I made the decision to switch and pursue my dream by focusing my attention on children's book, I have been concerned over what effect this blog will have on my chances of getting picked up by an agent and publisher. I have also grown concerned over the possibility of my dream failing, and being forced back into working for corporate America once again.  

I have gotten deeply personal about my mental illness, along with other personal things going on in my life. If you know this than you are also aware I am deeply opinionated, and I don't hold anything back when I write. If my main audience will be children, then this blog serves no purpose since there is nothing on here suitable for children. I wonder what will start happening once I start shopping my stuff around to agents. I am trying to sell a product geared towards children yet my online persona is the complete opposite. I wonder what will happen when agents get my manuscripts and Google my name. They will not think I am very marketable once they read some of the shit I have written. Will they immediately reject my work in fear that parents won't want to read books to their children written by someone like me? 

When I started this blog I had no intention of holding anything back. I was going to throw myself out there without any worries of what the long term consequences may be. I am sitting here now regretting my bold intentions, and wishing I would have shown some restraint or at least had the common sense to not use my real name. Hindsight is always twenty twenty , and I wish I would have been a bit more discrete. I will not be fully aware of how bad of a decision this was until I try to get another job or until I start getting rejection letters from agents. I suppose if they like the books enough they could always request I use a pen name. This is a possibility, but do I really want to risk this?

I just recently changed my profile, so it does not show my entire name, in hopes I can begin to undo over a years worth of damage. Up until last week I still used my first name, but I changed my display name to "Random Thinker." I am hoping this will cure the problem, but I do not think changing this will go back and change all my previous posts. All of the stuff I have written prior to this will still show my full name. I am sitting here racking my brain trying to figure out how to fix this. The relentless reality of the internet is; once shit is out there it is there to stay. I have thought about shutting this blog down and go through every one of my posts and mark as private so no one can ever see it. The thought of this daunting task is giving me unrelenting anxiety.

I did a little research, and I think I may have found a suitable answer to this problem, but it is not the most ideal. According to what I have read if I delete my blog, then my posts may still show on the internet (although the help menu was not clear on this.) My other option is to just disable my account. If I do this then all my posts will immediately become private, thus solving my main concerns. If I did this though then I could no longer write on here. If this were true then I am confronted with a serious decision to make. I suppose I could disable this site and create a new one which has no direct connection to me. The problem I have with this is I have worked real hard and put a lot into this site since I started it over a year ago. If I were to scrap this and create a completely new blog then I would be starting over from scrap and thus losing all my readers. My wife made the suggestion to start a new blog, and just post something on here saying my site has moved. I could leave this up for a couple weeks then switch to my new blog. If I were to do this I would have to completely move away from WordPress, which would suck because I wouldn't know of the best site to go to. I really need to analyze this decision more closely.