Tag: personal

personal versus blog!personal

// Tuesday, March 4, 2014

As much as I’ve been on the internet for forever, relatively speaking, in the past I haven’t been the most successful at actually maintaining a Public Persona Writing Blog, which is kind of how I think of it. The tone is different, and it’s not about publishing every single thought that comes into my head; it’s about thinking and planning and typing and editing, until there’s a final product that’s worth posting. I like the idea of being able to use that part of my brain on a regular basis, because it’s a type of writing that I miss (which is something I’ve touched on enough thus far that I won’t repeat myself). I am still figuring out the overall direction this blog is going to take, and I’m realizing that it is something I won’t know for sure until I post more, until I see what it is that I want to post more. I am, however, accumulating a number of drafts, of potential posts that I know I need to flesh out more before they’re something.

What I am currently struggling with – and I realize this is not unique to me – is where the line is between personal and blogme!personal: for example, I’ve had an instagram account since March 2012, and I’ve been fairly active there. There is a lot of overlap between the type of content I’ll be posting here (read: pictures of political books; of traveling; of  many, many cups of coffee), but there are also things that are separate from that, things that are still perfectly acceptable but outside of the realm of this blog. Do I link it? Do I create a separate instagram and re-post some of the pictures, acknowledging that they are reposts? Do I have a post, here, where I detail some of the places in said pictures and use said pictures, but start the new instagram from now, from pictures only taken after January 1, 2014? Am I overthinking this? (Hint: yes, yes I am.)

What it comes down to, really, is that throughout most of college, I had this phrase that I kept coming back to that related to being a lover of blurred lines (no relation to the Robin Thicke song, I assure you), referring to a number of things, but for example, how sometimes relationships aren’t always delineated the way one would expect, a sort of ‘modern romance’ problem, as it were. But as I’ve grown up and accumulated more life experiences, I don’t think that’s the best way to live, at least not in the broad sense. There are many, many areas of life where grey is good and acceptable and necessary, but so too are there many areas where  dividing things into at least reasonably rigid categories is the better option (Facebook is not for coworkers, per se; etc. etc. etc.). So given that, where does this blog fall? How much of my online identity is inherently tied to my private personal identity, versus my more standard public identity, or even my public professional identity? Where is that line, and to what extent does it matter?

I haven’t quite figured that out yet, but I’m working on it. If anyone has thoughts, feel free to share. I’ve been ruminating on this for quite a while and haven’t gotten any closer to figuring it out.

find your path, give back, make good choices

// Wednesday, February 19, 2014

The title of this post is not mine; it’s a refrain from a poem and a phrase on a t-shirt, both of which were written/created to memorialize the sudden death of Peter Arthur, a man who I was lucky enough to have as a teacher my freshman year of high school.

February 4th marked the eighth anniversary of his death. This is the first year I haven’t had some sort of Facebook status with the above phrase, lacking this year in part because I rarely use Facebook now and in part because there are very few people with whom I am Facebook friends with now that would understand. It’s odd to me, I guess, that I didn’t have someone to do the whole, “wait, how was that eight years ago?” thing with, but at the same time, it’s also strange that not posting on social media feels strange, that it almost feels like I’ve forgotten to remember because I didn’t remember publicly on the day of the anniversary.

I moved to the town containing said high school the August before senior year of high school; there are stark differences between the town and my hometown – socially, economically, politically. Mr. Arthur, in many ways, was crucial to me finding my footing. (Sidenote, I now realize why I’m sort of a pack rat, because I have no idea if I’m misremembering his class was my first class of the day or not, and I could check that the next time I go home home, maybe, possibly, if I can find the right box.) My locker was right outside his classroom, and due to the wonky school bus schedule, I would get to school at 7:05 even though classes didn’t start until 7:45. He almost always came in at 7:15, and we’d say hi and chat and that gave me such a wonderful sense of having some sort of anchor, someone at that school to whom I mattered. I’ve come a long way since then. We talked the Friday afternoon before he died and made plans to catch up the following week (because we were busy, because there would be time).

And this post is off-topic, in a sense, if only because this posts exists only to say that I miss him, that I remember, that time is a very strange thing, that putting things off can have unforeseen consequences.

February is a time to tell those you care about that you care about them. Too many terrible things have happened in February throughout the years.

Regular posts to return soon.