Won't Talk About It

I have a bunch of things I want to talk about, but all of them would [a] take too long, and [b] expose too much. It might be painfully obvious, or it might be news to everyone who reads this, but I am a bit uneasy about my public persona. On the one hand, I enjoy sharing here as part catharsis, part family holiday letter, part YOU ARE NOT ALONE billboard. On the other hand, I'm not entirely comfortable knowing that someone might actually, you know, READ what I've written.

I guess I like to think of myself as some anonymous Wife Mother Writer Coder Winger (as my MOO cards advertise), connecting with close friends and family at one end of the spectrum, and like-minded strangers on the other. What makes me decidedly uncomfortable is either becoming a celebrity whom others think they know (archetype: dooce), or (the more likely scenario) becoming sorta kinda well-known for the work I do.

If you're a regular reader, you probably have no idea what I'm talking about with that somewhat-more-likely scenario, because I don't talk about work here very often. Here's a little background: While I used to work on a much more famous product with a much larger user base than I do now, I enjoyed some amount of anonymity in working for a large company. I might have been famous—or at least familiar—among our internal beta testers, but otherwise, nobody really knew or cared what I did for a living. Most people assume that the Dreamweaver hoodie I wear almost daily is a reference to the Gary Wright song of the same name, and never give it a second thought.

The job I'm in now is different in a few ways, namely: [a] I'm working for a much smaller company (i.e., there's nowhere to hide); [b] because we're small, produce open-source products, and don't have a giant advertising budget, everyone's responsible for some amount of guerrilla marketing; and [c] it's my job to work closely, personally, with Ajax framework developers on a win-win-win (for them, for us, and for our users) proposition: getting support for their frameworks into one of our products.

So, why is this a problem? Well, mostly it's not; I like win-win-win propositions, I like being in a position to make developers' lives easier (both framework developers' and web developers'), and I like solving technical and process problems. What I'm not so comfortable with is putting myself out there. I don't like asking people for things. I don't like forcing myself on anyone. And, as I said above, I'm not entirely sure I want anyone who's not already in my inner circle to really know what I'm doing, thinking, saying, or photographing. This is why my Twitter updates are protected, why my photos of the Beaner on Flickr are Friends and Family only, why I have gazillions of MOO cards but hardly ever hand them out. I *think* I want to put myself out there, but when it comes right down to it, I really don't.

Thus the minor freakout when, after releasing an updated plugin for one of the Ajax frameworks we support last month and being reminded by our marketing director to ask the developers of said framework to blog about the release, my contact responded with a lovely post about the work I'd personally done... and linked my name back to this here blog. Now, perhaps no one will read the post (unlikely). And perhaps no one will click on the link to find out who the hell Lori Hylan-Cho is (likely). But all of sudden, my professional life was connected to my very personal blog in a way that set off all my Oh My God I'm OUT THERE alarms.

The first thing I did when I saw the post (which I'm not going to link to lest trackbacks are on and I end up making things much, much worse) was come over here to make sure that nothing entirely crazy or frightfully personal was on the front page. And even though I haven't stopped writing—I'm sort of stealth-participating in NaBloPoMo this month, in fact—I've been thinking a lot lately about what I say and how I say it. I'm self-censoring even more than usual. You might even have noticed that I haven't mentioned the name of the company for which I work, nor the name of the product I work on, even though both are public knowledge and have been mentioned on this blog before. Why? Because if I mention the name, this post will show up in a Google alert for that word that many in my company (including me) get every day. That's EXACTLY the scenario I'm trying to avoid (among others).

So I'm not sure how to end this gracefully, as I didn't intend to write all that I did when I started, and I'm writing directly in the Movable Type web interface. (Usually I write in Dreamweaver when I've got a lengthy post in mind, so I can organize my thoughts better and see everything I've written at once.) I guess I just wanted to put it out there that I'm not comfortable with putting it out there. And I think it's starting to show... which is not what I want.

<le sigh>

Posted by Lori in me, me, me at 5:17 PM on November 7, 2008

Comments (2)

Here is your friend Jen. Your friend Jen who is also a commenter here of a few years thinks it is fine if you want to only show parts of yourself on your blog and in your professional life.

I have been wondering lately how much one being an introvert or an extrovert on the Myers-Briggs style tests also effects one's adoption of technologies. I had also had many conversations with other women type folk in the last 6 months about how do those of us who like be private/modest promote ourselves professionally or at the very least defend ourselves in a professional setting that expects showboating.

Do you feel comfortable asking the folks who wrote about you to only link to your work and not to your private blog?

Anywhooo, before I sound to scattered, please keep NaBloPoMo-ing. ;o)

Lori [TypeKey Profile Page]:

Thanks for the support, Jen.

I've been wondering about the introvert/extrovert thing relates to technology adoption, too; I think it depends on adopting a technology forces you to interact with people in person, or whether it lets you have a layer between yourself and others. ;-)

Comments

Here is your friend Jen. Your friend Jen who is also a commenter here of a few years thinks it is fine if you want to only show parts of yourself on your blog and in your professional life.

I have been wondering lately how much one being an introvert or an extrovert on the Myers-Briggs style tests also effects one's adoption of technologies. I had also had many conversations with other women type folk in the last 6 months about how do those of us who like be private/modest promote ourselves professionally or at the very least defend ourselves in a professional setting that expects showboating.

Do you feel comfortable asking the folks who wrote about you to only link to your work and not to your private blog?

Anywhooo, before I sound to scattered, please keep NaBloPoMo-ing. ;o)

Posted by: Ms. Jen at November 8, 2008 12:33 AM

Thanks for the support, Jen.

I've been wondering about the introvert/extrovert thing relates to technology adoption, too; I think it depends on adopting a technology forces you to interact with people in person, or whether it lets you have a layer between yourself and others. ;-)

Posted by: Lori [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 8, 2008 12:58 PM

Comments are now closed.