I’ve been writing this blog for over 2 years now. I’ve been making things and sharing them online for much longer, perhaps much longer than I should have. That means I’ve shared a lot of myself. It’s inevitable. We’re a part of everything we make, and even more so when what we’re making is a essentially a string of short personal essays.
Over the years I’ve put a lot of those up on here. I’ve touched on my work, my taste, my fears, my hopes, and even a fair bit of my mental health. It’s all documented and available for anyone to see.
I think because I grew up online. Pouring my feelings out on the internet has always been the most natural thing in the world. I’ve spoken about it in more length before but the internet felt safe when I was 13.
But as I get older, I’m not sure it should be. I’m not sure how healthy it is if I’m honest.
There seems to be a move to share more and more in an effort to seem ‘authentic’. We watch the minutiae of other people’s lives in vlogs. We read their deepest feelings in blogs. We want to see their raw unedited selves in photos.
I have a number of ideas about why, all centred on this new age of isolation on our craving for connection. But whatever the reason, we’re blurring more and more boundaries to make the internet versions of ourselves as “real” (whatever that may mean) for an audience.
The fact that it’s for an audience is what’s really started to unsettle me. I know I’m writing this while still actively seeking an audience for what I make, the irony hasn’t escaped me. I want to be honest and I want to share information that helps people, but I don’t want to feel like I’m having to trade in pieces of myself in order to do that.
I’m trying to find a way of making content that’s personable and relatable without it feeling like I’m oversharing, because I want to keep some of myself just for myself. If that makes sense. I don’t want all of my innermost demons to be out here where they can come back and haunt me, and I don’t want to sell off my best moments either.
In short, after all of that meditative moaning, I want to be more conscious of how much I’m sharing here and why I’m sharing the personal details I do bake into my writing and my illustration. Does anyone have any ways of working through this? I know I can’t be the only one struggling with it.
I have a constant battle with this.
On the one hand, my blog is anonymous: I write under a pseudonym, only a select people know about it, there’s no phots of me etc. but it is very personal. On the other hand, I want to explore it further, maybe create videos, lose some of the anonymity. But I’m unsure of where to keep the balance. Because sometimes it feels like you’re standing on a stage sharing your personal thoughts with a crowd of people. There’s no mutual exchange.
So the question I’m trying to ask myself is: what am I hoping for in all of this, why am I doing it? Unfortunately, I don’t have any answers, just more questions.