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Multiple Personalities
Sep. 8th, 2013 09:54 amThe other day my place of employment suddenly followed me on Twitter. First I was confused, because I run our Facebook page, so who on earth had started a Twitter for us? (It was a new hire, in fact. So now I really am not the only social-media guru of the library). Then I started to reply in my typical Twitter voice... and it struck me how different my Twitter voice is from my Real Life voice. I was going to put a picture of the Awesome Thing I made for one of my programs next week on Twitter (except I messed up taking the picture so I don't actually have one yet), and thought of @-mentioning the library in it so she could retweet it and it would be an awesome teaser for the program, but then I was like, do I really want to advertize my Twitter as belonging to our library's children's librarian? I don't MIND if people know that's me, but it's not, you know, an OFFICIAL me. It's a place where I mostly talk and squee and RT library-related THINGS, in fact, but it's also where I whine about my kids and my health and FREQUENTLY TALK IN ALL-CAPS and indulge in my remorseless obsession-crush on Martin Freeman (WHO, by the way, is 42 years old today. IT'S ARTHUR DENT'S 42ND BIRTHDAY, WORLD! Appreciate the SIGNIFICANCE!). I'm not ASHAMED of my Twitter self, it's just... there's a DISCONNECT.
My professional self is ALL library-enthusiasm ALL the time (with patrons. With colleagues I'm more the real-life self described below). My Twitter self is an ongoing noisy pseudo-conversation with the Internet at large. My Facebook self is a more directed-at-people-I-sort-of-know, somewhat-more-restrained pseudo-conversation. My LiveJournal self, speaking now, is my philosophical-but-still-a-little-sarcastic-or-wry reaching-out-to-the-world outpouring-of-big-thoughts, usually. My private journal self is a mixture of that and the mundane and self-assessment and rambles about what I dreamt the night before. My real life social-and-familial-interaction self is scatterbrained, tongue-tied, seemingly powerless, blatantly Type-9.
So after this last reminder, I again found myself thinking, which is the Real Me?
Stupid, trick question. They ALL are.
People can keep saying "You don't really know a person online" as if to discount the real relationships we make with people through the Interwebz, but we don't really know ANYBODY we only know from one aspect of their lives. So does it matter? How do we think about people? How do we judge people? SHOULD we judge people, when we will never know the whole story?
Anyway, I think the healthier I get, the more I grow, the closer Live-and-in-Person Me will get to LiveJournal Me. I think THIS me is indeed close to my True Voice, whatever that is. My private paper journals are closer yet, but even if I'm totally emotionally healthy I'll still have a private side. But meanwhile, I've still got this shell to outgrow. Maybe to incorporate. Maybe I'll always be quiet, I'll just stop being so SHY.
I always thought that if people could read my journals, then they'd really know me. I still think that's a bit true. But only if they already have the context of another-kind-of me.
Anyway, so that's me. Meanwhile, have yourself a Very Happy Martin Day!
My professional self is ALL library-enthusiasm ALL the time (with patrons. With colleagues I'm more the real-life self described below). My Twitter self is an ongoing noisy pseudo-conversation with the Internet at large. My Facebook self is a more directed-at-people-I-sort-of-know, somewhat-more-restrained pseudo-conversation. My LiveJournal self, speaking now, is my philosophical-but-still-a-little-sarcastic-or-wry reaching-out-to-the-world outpouring-of-big-thoughts, usually. My private journal self is a mixture of that and the mundane and self-assessment and rambles about what I dreamt the night before. My real life social-and-familial-interaction self is scatterbrained, tongue-tied, seemingly powerless, blatantly Type-9.
So after this last reminder, I again found myself thinking, which is the Real Me?
Stupid, trick question. They ALL are.
People can keep saying "You don't really know a person online" as if to discount the real relationships we make with people through the Interwebz, but we don't really know ANYBODY we only know from one aspect of their lives. So does it matter? How do we think about people? How do we judge people? SHOULD we judge people, when we will never know the whole story?
Anyway, I think the healthier I get, the more I grow, the closer Live-and-in-Person Me will get to LiveJournal Me. I think THIS me is indeed close to my True Voice, whatever that is. My private paper journals are closer yet, but even if I'm totally emotionally healthy I'll still have a private side. But meanwhile, I've still got this shell to outgrow. Maybe to incorporate. Maybe I'll always be quiet, I'll just stop being so SHY.
I always thought that if people could read my journals, then they'd really know me. I still think that's a bit true. But only if they already have the context of another-kind-of me.
Anyway, so that's me. Meanwhile, have yourself a Very Happy Martin Day!
