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.

When I started this blog I was just starting my career, on two fronts. I was just starting to try to take illustration and design a little bit more seriously. I had also just started my first proper job, a role on a grad scheme, in London.

That was over two years ago now. I’ve been through that grad scheme, I’ve learned a lot about communications, about digital, about consulting, about design, about what I want out of a career. I’ve also now spent a full year in my role as a consultant at Transform, but what that means day to day is always shifting and evolving.

Now, I’ve spoken a little bit on here and in an interview with Lecture in Progress about what I do. But I thought it was worth explaining properly, because when I started this blog I had no idea what the kinds of roles out there really were, or what I wanted to do.

I think it’s hard to imagine a role when you only know what the title is, or if you haven’t interacted with the industry. By that I mean, it’s probably not too hard to imagine what a waitress’s role would involve because we’ve all been to a coffee shop or a restaurant, but it’s much harder to imagine what a food specifications technologist might do, even though it’s still about what would end up on our plates.

I’m not a food specifications technologist (if anyone is please let me know what you do!) I’m a consultant, AKA the vaguest job title in the world. I work for a company which transforms digital services and strategies. Specifically I work within a team that designs services – everything from Argos’s click and collect to being able to appeal a Home Office decision online.

What that means day to day is that I do a number of things, mainly focused on research and analysis. A big chunk of my days are centred around talking to people (as an introvert this is probably a weird choice of career path I know) and asking them about how they do their jobs or use certain services. I analyse what motivates them, what things they struggle with and can be improved, what works well, and how they’ll likely use whatever service I’m working on. I then take that information back to a team who I work with to develop a plan for a service (everything from what the process will be to how staff are trained), then feed into its development (the coding of the digital bit) and improvement. It’s a job that’s about learning about lots of different people and translating what you’ve learned into a service that hopefully helps them.

I work in small project based teams. That means we work in a very focused way around one problem for a fixed period of time. This has pros and cons. I really like project work where you get your teeth stuck in, and all work together to a common goal. You never get bored and have the opportunity to become a temporary expert in lots of different things. But that means you never have too much of a routine, from how your day goes, where you work, or even just having a desk to yourself.

I’ve worked on all kinds of projects from public services, to internal business and government processes, to things for retail. Personally, I always find the public services the most rewarding, because you have the opportunity to really help people, and to do so on a much bigger scale. But they’re also the projects that can be the trickiest to navigate.

So, that’s what I do right now. I don’t know if it’s what I’ll always be doing, but it’s keeping me on my toes and pushing me to grow and I think that’s what I need for the moment.