Starting up a blog is a little bit like moving into a new house, or renovating the place that you have lived for many years. Until you have your housewarming party, all of your efforts are essentially self-directed attempts at expressing yourself, without any significant feedback. To say that this process is scary is only to scratch the surface. For me, there is an exhilaration, a delving into the unknown. It’s like jumping off the boat, into the water, after suiting up with scuba gear and checking all your safety points. Even though you have done everything possible to make yourself safe, you still don’t know what awaits you in the deep blue below.
I’ve been putting information up on computer bulletin systems since the early ’90s, and posting to the Internet since the mid ’90s. Still, there is something different about putting up a personal portfolio and blog. The whole point of putting up such a site is to have people come and look at it and have the opportunity to judge you. Not only that, but people have the opportunity to comment on what you post, people you have never met in real life.
Here’s a little anecdote: I was once working in a very large tech firm, and I was pretty sure during most of the time there that nobody had made the connection between my real persona and my online nickname. For a long time, I managed to keep everything nice and separate in several different bins. Eventually, I made the bold move of publishing some photography to multiple groups–some of whom knew me under my real name and some new me under one of my online nicknames.
A few hours later, a couple of coworkers came to my cube giggling nearly uncontrollably. One of them had been tipped off to the shared identity of the online persona and the real persona. We had a good laugh over it, but I realized that I had opened a Pandora’s box. There was no way for me to fully stuff that online identity back in again.
Eventually, I realized that it was best for me to be completely honest with my real name, and to associate it with the work that I’ve done that I’m proud of. That’s what this site is all about.
I use several open microblogs to keep my millions of several fans updated on all the stupid stuff I’m doing. Whether that means every song I blip on blip.fm, or where I’m at and what I’m up to, or the latest news in the world of science (see science.status.net).