I go to Nancy’s blog to look for the Pear & Cranberry Chutney recipe to cook for tomorrow and then remember that I have a blog too and that it had been silent way too long. So here I am :)

The truth is that I feel a bit like a caterpilar in a cocoon – hiding from everyone and in a process of a transformation. I never thought that I would think of stopping blogging here – so much this blog was me. What I didn’t realise is that identities change or, to be more specific, some of those many identities in each of us take leading role for a while. Or, to be even more specific, I didn’t realise how much my professional identity was leading in my life. Untill I stopped working :)

Letting go professional identity gave time and space to all others that were also in me, hidden. It’s an interesting process to reflect on – letting go parts of your old life to give space for new things to emerge. And scary at times (enough not to write about it :)

As for the online writing – it feels funny to see how social media is getting picked up by lots of people I know and, at the same time, not to have much of the need to do it myself. I do write online – under a different nickname, mainly private and in Russian. Somehow that fits better what I need now (and helps building very different networks). Hopefully writing in Dutch will come as well (as I need it too), but I’m not there yet.

So, what I’m busy with now? All things “green” and local, sewing, house and kids, as well as alternative educational modes. There are a lot of things to write about there, although I’m not sure anymore that this blog is the right space for it (well, if you want to hear about my compost worms let me know :). The last topic would fit pretty well here, but at the moment writing about it feels a bit like writing about internal corporate issues while being employed there – it’s a thin line to navigate and I’m not there yet.

I do miss many of you with whom I connected via this space. Unfortunately letting go work also means that lots of shared activities and shared spaces where you connects with your network go to the background. So, I just send all of you my best wishes for the coming year – strength to go out of your comfort zone and time to enjoy life :)

• Comparing weblog text to the PhD dissertation via tagclouds
• Safe-fail probes and diffusion of innovations
• On blogging and book writing

While lots of people tend to focus on the positive side of finishing a PhD (which is, of course, a great achievement :) I feel more like the one who is just released from a prison. Finally you are free to make choices, but, after spending for so long in a solitary confinement you don’t really know who you are, what you can do, what is out there to choose from and where to start with.

It seems to play at two levels: identity and routines.

Identity

Working on the dissertation forced convergence and focus, but as a result I find it difficult to find a new professional identity. Who am I (next to being an ex-prisoner someone who just completed a PhD)? Where do I belong (next to academia, where I don’t really belong even if I am a researcher)? What are the issues that I want to work on? I didn’t want to believe others when they said that I wouldn’t want to do anything with the topic of my dissertation. Not that I don’t want to talk about blogging anymore, but I definitely don’t want to talk primarily about blogging and especially being known as “the one who knows something about blogging”. [Mark, you were right, I'm working on finding a new story to tell :)]

What I’m trying to do to deal with with one:

• Do things I left for “after the PhD life”, diving into topics and communities that provide complimentary, but fresh perspective on my professional worldview. Ideally as a more or less structured learning experience (I’m starting from Cognitive Edge accreditation course, CPsquare foundations workshop and KM4Dev workshop).
• Find what makes me happy by doing interesting things with interesting people. On a small scale, without worrying too much how would they fit in a bigger professional picture.
• Ask people I trust where they see my experiences and expertise fit.
• All that trying to make sure that I don’t get into too many commitments of what could fit next to regular things at work and in life.

Routines

This is actually the one that’s more challenging: I’m stuck in unproductive routines, being stressed by the amount artefacts, digital and otherwise, that have accumulated in wrong spaces while I tried to focus on the core activities of getting the PhD done and making sure my family survives in the process. There are backlogs everywhere and reading that “high stress environments can cause the brain to rewire itself in ways that reinforce and contribute to ongoing stress” makes it look like vicious circle.

I don’t have a recipe here, but the things that work for me are much closer to FlyLady approach than to GTD, taking baby steps instead of sorting through everything before establishing new strategies and routines:

Your home did not get dirty in one day and it will not get clean in a day either. You have been living in clutter and CHAOS for many years, you are not going to get your home clean in a day. I do not want you to crash and burn. This is why I teach you to take baby steps. If you try to do this all at once, you are going to be mad at me, because this will be like every other “get-organized” method you have tried. I want you to take your time. As you establish one habit, you will very easily be able to add another one to your routines. – FlyLady

While FlyLady approach is aimed primarily at SHEs (Side Tracked Home Executives :), I am looking how the ideas behind it might work where most of my problems are – in a digital / professional sphere. Let’s see…

• Learning as building own context
• ALT Spring: Research workshop on lifelong learning
• Blended Learning Models

This post is kind of related to the blog networking study, but please treat it as not very scientific thinking in a middle of the night. It’s on the study results in respect to presenting oneself through blogging.

One issue that is not really clear there is how intentional is shaping one’s own image through blogging: from one side, bloggers do make choices about if, what and how to write in their weblogs, from another – they seem to let things emerge through their writing.

Weblogs are easily viewed as a space for identity management (re:Goffman) where blogging is a frontstage performance set to impress the audience in a particular way. I feel that blogging is rather a backstage, where you can be yourself, even if it’s in public. Like in this post by Fa Martin-Niemi:

We moved into a new modern flat a few months ago with lovely views of the harbour and ocean.  All I could think about is what we could see.  “Oh, look from this window and this one and the deck…”  What I hadn’t thought about was windows work both ways.  So one day when I was walking home, I looked up and noticed my son’s bed was unmade and he had toys all over the floor.  It took a second before I realised that if I could see this from the road, then so could all of the hundreds of people who walk and drive by our flat everyday.

Now, I am thinking that blogging may be similar.  I love reading good blog posts.  “Oh, look at this one and that.  Did you read the one about…?  Let me send you a link”  So when I created this blog all I could think about is all of the great views I could see.  But of course, this blog like most are public so every word I write can be seen by anyone passing by.  Not just by the friends and commenters who I know about, but also the unknown lurkers who happen upon it.

The funny thing is you get used to it.  I didn’t start closing the curtains when I realised that everyone could see in.  I didn’t even start cleaning.  I just decided that it comes with the territory.  If I want to look out, it means that others can look in.  So with blogging I am not going to close access and change my writing.  In fact, I welcome the casual readers.  Hope you are enjoying it, dirty laundry and all…

In the comments to the post on presenting oneself through blogging there is a discussion on why bloggers in the study post personal details on their blogs and how they might deal with unexpected audiences. My intuition (=did not check it properly with the data) says that it’s more of the discovering over time that “it comes with the territory” – it’s not only ok to be yourself (and personal), it is essentially the thing that brings those unexpected connections that are so valued.

Being yourself (like with good friends) – vulnerable, personal, multidimentional – in public, you meet others.  If weblog is an attractor, a “gravity pull” (Ton) then whatever you project outside “people will appear who appreciate that” (Martin). You start to “chat with people as they were your friends” (Dave) and they eventually become your friends. You start performing, they become an audience.

So, in a sense, performance is counterproductive.

It also takes more effort than being youself, since multiple audiences collide in one space and a performance means you have figure out how to play multiple roles at the same time. And it kills unexpectedness, since the performance defines the audience.

This also explains, why there are so many signs of “it wasn’t intented, just emerged that way” and “if you try to sell via blogging things go wrong” attitudes between the interview lines.

Still, why there is a struggle of how personal a weblog should be? My guess – while you can be yourself with friends, you probably do not want to be naked with all of them and even if you do not mind, you probably wouldn’t do it in a public place.

• Effects of reading someone else’s feeds
• How ‘individualistic’ weblogs support community
• Changing shapes

This post is part of the series describing the results of the study of blogger networking practices. Please take into account a couple of things:

• This is a draft. Healthy scepticism and comments are very welcome. A few specific questions are at the end of this post.
• Statements are linked to the names of people who talked about particular issue, those might be true or not true for others.

***

Weblogs become online representations of their authors, who talk about weblogs as “the core” (Ton), “the record” (Dave), their online presence and a “long-term commitment towards yourself and your personal brand” (Luis), something that continues to represent them as they change (“I can change my job or interests, but the URL will be the same”, Martin). Euan provides an example of the role of blogging in that respect talking about someone he works with who does not have a weblog:

He is using Twitter and some other things… It feels like miasma – I’ve got nowhere I can point people to because he doesn’t got a blog and the other bits are too dispersed. So [the weblog] is like a core, a gravitational pull. (Euan)

The interviews bring several choices in respect to bloggers own presentation through blogging. First, they need to make themselves visible through writing to those they would (potentially) like to reach. Then they shape their writing to address the demands of different audiences that their weblogs expose them to. Finally, they just “let it be”: allowing their “true self” to be revealed through blogging and to be constructed by others.

In order to be present, to exist, bloggers need to be visible to others by writing their weblogs. For Luis the need to start blogging in public came from experiences of blogging internally and his dissatisfaction with a “half-way conversation” with KM bloggers who couldn’t see comments and links from his internal blog. He talks about the need to blog externally to have proper conversations, to become one of KM bloggers, “to build up a community of people to share”, “to help me to position myself as a thought leader within the field”. He says, “[blogging externally] allowed me to have a public face, a public voice”.

For Monica, it was important to be able to put her name on previously anonymous weblog once her authorship was discovered by a journalist and become known in her organisation. She talks about her own practice of checking weblogs of others to find out who they are and dissatisfaction of not being visible in the same way. She also provides an example of a need to become invisible when her former colleagues commented on her presence with them even after leaving the research group (that didn’t support her PhD aspirations), as a result of continuing to blog about her ideas:

I had mixed feelings, so I stopped posting work-related things there. [...] I felt used. (Monica)

However, writing a weblog is not enough to be present as a blogger, it is also important to use the language that potential audience will understand. Gabriela tells about creating a blog in English next to the one she wrote in Romanian to be able to connect to bloggers she met at a conference. Monica and Martin, who write primarily in Portuguese and German as a way to connect with their national audiences, talk about struggles to make choices between languages. For them connection with local audiences comes at a price of being invisible to their English-speaking network that they address once in a while by writing in English.

With a weblog one may be also present to different types of audiences: peers, existing or potential clients, and friends. Relations with those people involve different ways of writing and interacting that do not necessarily coexist well together, resulting in a need to shape the way one is represented by a weblog.

Martin provides an example by telling what led him to stop blogging 1,5 years ago, referring to the dynamics around his weblog as one of the reasons for it. In the German-speaking internet his weblog became “quite famous” and got exposed to a “different sphere of people”, who expected him to “be a pundit who knows everything”. From one side he wanted to play that role as it allowed him to get more business. From another side catering for these expectations in his weblog collided with the open and vulnerable style of blogging necessary for learning and networking with peers. At the certain moment there was too much confusion, so he decided to stop blogging. According to Martin, blogging for marketing purposes “has a different attitude and you get clash of the contexts”.

Even when blogging is supporting one’s business as in the case of Dave, it is important “not to push your ideas”:

if you say interesting things or link to interesting stuff people will come and talk to you anyway (Dave).

In additional to managing tensions that might arise around different professional uses of a weblog, there are also choices about the degree of revealing personal details of one’s life in it. While many respondents emphasizes the blurring boundaries between personal and professional, professional contacts and friends for both business in general and blogging in particular, they also limit the degree of exposing personal details in a weblog. Euan notes that weblogs “rely on you having an opinion and expressing it and it’s not the most easy thing in a work context.” Monica considers many bloggers she knows friends, not professional contacts as she observes the details of their lives that “only friends have a privilege [to see]“, however, she is also not comfortable revealing too much on her weblog: “I will not talk about myself. For me blogging and being in public are the same”.

Given the impact of blogging on one’s reputation it is tempting to think of it as a way to construct a favourable image of oneself. However, the interviews hint that while weblogs may be viewed by bloggers as their online representations, their uses in that respect may not be fully intentional and directed. Not only bloggers comment on networking as a side effect of blogging rather than an explicit purpose for it, they also seem to believe that there are limits of how much their image could be controlled.

For example, when talking about his weblog as a “trustworthy anchor point” for his clients, Ton explains that it works that way “because you can’t fake six years worth of blogging”. Dave, reacting to my comment about his experiences of presenting to big audiences says “keynote is a performance, blog is more intimate” and then tells about being surprised with “the degree you reveal yourself on the weblog”, sharing “half-formed ideas” and starting to “chat with people as they were your friends”.

Blogging under one’s own name as a professional might be one of the reasons not to “fake it” as others can eventually get into a closer contact anyway. For example, Euan tells about the temptation to become “more guarded” to address increasing business risks of blogging when getting self-employed and his decision against it: “it’s better if people know what I’m thinking before starting to pay me”. Martin, reflecting on his experiences says that now he would rather express what he thinks and “people will appear who appreciate that”.

In addition, bloggers are not only “revealing themselves” to others, but also exploring who they are, through their writing and reactions of people to it:

I existed and had a life apart from my existence, just because of the insights I put in the blogs I created… I also discovered things about myself I didn’t know… when more people started saying something about me. (Monica)

One can have a preferred image of oneself as a professional, but readers of a weblog construct their own anyway based on weblog writing, as, for example, with Nancy, who tells about others positioning her weblog as a “KM blog” or “educational blog”, when she doesn’t view it this way.

Participants view their weblogs as their online representations and also shape their actions accordingly. In order to “exist” for the audiences they may want to reach and potential connections to emerge bloggers not only need to be blogging, but also do it in a way connected to one’s name, continue blogging over time and written in a language that the audience can understand. While there they have to draw boundaries of what and how to include in their writing, they also let their image to be shaped by their writing and their audiences.

***

This is the part of the results that I’m most unsure of, so any comments are welcome. If you are a blogger I’d love hear how much what I say here is true for you personally.

Things that are not covered here, but would be interesting to discuss as well:

• how “my blog is my online identity” works for people with multuple blogs and mainly contributing to a multi-author blog
• how bloggers deal with addressing multiple topical audiences of their blogs – are there any struggles there?

I’m also thinking about this whole issue in respect to identity management and playing with a couple of ideas from Goffman (giving vs. giving off via the weblog, weblog as a backstage), so if you are into those things I’d love to talk.

• Large social network imposes an higher attention degree on what goes on worldwide
• BlogHer aftermath
• Blog changing way we meet people

Jill, in between the lines:

I love reading between the lines of blogs – though sometimes I’m completely wrong about things! So it was fun to see an interpreted and confirmed version of what went on behind the scenes of Jason Kottke’s and Meg Hourihan’s blogs in the last few years:

[...]

Me, I’ve gone a bit quieter with my own between the lines. Realising that a lot of students and colleagues and bosses and journalists sometimes read my blog has got me drawing sharper lines between public and private. I’ll let you know when I get married, though :)

This echoes my own struggles. When preparing for our wedding I was drawn between desire to share and need for privacy.

From one side, I’ve learned so much about bringing different cultures together in a wedding while reading stories of Wendy and Joey getting married – I’m grateful they blogged so much of it. I felt like doing something similar for unknown readers (anyone needs help regarding paperwork to marry a foreigner in Moscow?). And I also wanted to share the fun with those friends who do not come for dinner often enough to hear the stories.

From another side, I wouldn’t be myself doing something like that – I close the curtains so strangers on the street can’t peek into our living room (and if you walk in a residential neighbourhood in the Netherlands you know how uncommon it is). In same way – I’m not comfortable making things too explicit in my blog.

We tried to figure out something in between for our wedding – figuring workarounds, mix of technologies and practices to share and to keep it private at the same time (I was close to reposting here “wedding blogging policy” from our private blog, but then did a check and figured out that having a quote here makes it too easy to find ;).

I just hope that one day I will need less workarounds for selective sharing – deciding for a piece of information how far it should do – to the whole world, to friends, to family or to my personal online space, visible only to me. It works now in many bigger group spaces (e.g. Flickr and LJ), but I want it to work in my own space and I don’t want to depend on the registering all my friends in yet another online something.

Fingers crossed. We’ve got so many buddy lists around that they should turn into something really useful.

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2006/06/16.html#a1780; comments are here.

• My boyfriend or why I don’t make things instantly visible
• On attributing interviews done for my research: the dark side of transparency
• What to do if your Mom discovers your blog…

Mark Bernstein on what I called networked identity:

Miles assumes that the linked pages are the essence of the blogosphere that they flavor the blog so intensely that they set its key, its tonality. Lilia demurs; I fancy, though, that if Lilia were slashdotted more frequently, the slashdotting would change things. If your blog inscribes your calendar — adding speaking engagements and consulting trips — does it inscribe you? If it inscribes your bank account, does it change who you are?

Wouldn’t say I disagree with Adrian – your network is part of your identity (as said in Russia – “tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are”). What I wasn’t sure is how far it “writes you” without any of your control over it. Taking Mark’s questions: my blog doesn’t inscribe my calendar or my bank account; sure it takes a role in creating an opportunity, but it’s me making choices which of the opportunities to follow.

Links as relations have at least two parties (more if it’s true hypertext as far as I know :), but links are only indications, not relations themselves. Yes, I don’t have control on links to my weblog. Yes, those links can influence who I am – by creating opportunities for a contact or creating an impression that there is a relation. Yes, my identity is constructed in interactions. But all these doesn’t mean that there is less me in it…

On the top of it – how is this different from the real life? If someone crazy says to be my good friend you may think I’m crazy as well, but normally you would find a way to check it with me first. You would look for some kind of triangulation, some kind of evidence. How much links are different?

Of course, there is a difference. In scale, connectivity, exposure, speed. May be it makes me less in control of my identity, but I still have some :)

And – being slashdotted may change who you are – like living through an earthquake :))) Blogging just increases the probability (as moving to Japan does :)

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2005/04/21.html#a1557; comments are here.

• Blog networking study: getting things done
• Blog networking study: presenting oneself through blogging
• Meeting imaginary friend

Talking with Rick about masks, roles and theater and reading Torill‘s dissertation (Pleasures of the Player: Flow and Control in Online Games, 1,6MB pdf) connected when I realised that I do not really enjoy role playing while I like playing with my multiple identities.

Drawing the line between these two is not easy, but so far I think about multiple identities as different sides of myself and about role-playing as taking a role of someone who is not me (elf assassin for example :). Need to dig into theory to get it clear…

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/10/11.html#a1381; comments are here.

• Private, public and selective sharing
• Not bloging, identities and Happy New Year :)
• Networked identity: links, relations and control