Week 2: Presenting the Self Online

 Putting Yourself Out There

Writing about yourself in deeply personal ways can be challenging win its own right. Moving that personal writing to the internet where the world can see it is a scary undertaking that makes you ask yourself a lot of questions. Who will read it? Will they care? What is the point I am trying to make? Does it matter?

Personally, I enjoy writing about myself. It feels as though I am enjoying a rare opportunity to have a conversation with myself and get to know myself. I kept diaries and journals before and after I ventured onto the internet and began keeping a blog. It was exciting to put my thoughts online knowing that anyone could read them. Some of my friends had them too, so we would comment on each other’s posts. In the end, though, I have struggled to be fully comfortable posting about myself or my thoughts on the internet. The reasons for this have changed over the years ranging from not getting enough viewers, not having the time, feeling that my content is uninteresting – general insecurities of youth that I think the writing itself can at times bring out.

Whether we should share such personal thoughts with the internet is a big question that we must each answer on our own. For myself, when I was younger, it was not right for me. We all should make our own pros-and-cons list considering the format, the audience, your goal, and your content. Will you set boundaries for your content, only writing about your work life or will you also write about the challenges of parenthood? Of course, there is always the concern of oversharing. Wondering if you have said too much can make you nervous to post, but as long as what you are sharing serves your purpose for writing, then share away. If we are writing about our self, then it is difficult to truly overshare, because writing about our self is a way to know our self and to draw too many boundaries may stifle the self we are trying to understand. This may appear as losing your voice or losing your focus, but if you continue to write, it’s purpose will be found.

Consuming the “Other”

Besides, let’s face it – people love to read about other people and the most controversial stories often get the most attention. Celebrities have even been reported to fake scandal to get more attention in the media. People are interested in reading about other’s intimate details in order to understand them, to understand their way of life, to gain insight into a creative process, and sometimes to just be nosey. Everyone has their own reasons. While modern mediums have made consuming people’s lives easier, I would argue that desiring intimate information about others is not a purely modern issue. People love stories. Looking at mythologies, we see stories about individuals passed down for centuries and these stories serve two purposes: to teach and to entertain. Any story we tell about ourselves can do the same if it is told well.

The Insight of the Unfiltered

For my own writing, I almost always start with a stream-of-consciousness style of writing. My mind goes so quickly, jumping to make connections at every chance, that for me to sit down and write an entire essay from beginning to end with no prewriting feels like writing with my hands tied behind my back. I lose my focus and have no idea where I’m going. I won’t claim that this is right for everyone or that everyone does the same – though I would say that everyone can benefit from doing so at some point. There is a sort of liberation that comes from simply pounding out thoughts on the keyboard. Reviewing for spelling and clarity will inevitably come, but it not crucial to address in the beginning stages of writing.

For those of us who do write in this manner, it would be a shame to think we are the only ones who can benefit from reading this. The writing may seem jarring or confusing at first to an outside reader, but once they read something written in this manner in its entirety, they may be able to make connections that the writer themselves did not see. This does benefit the writer because the reader may share with them a new perspective and incorporating others’ perspectives on our self is crucial to developing our self. Alternatively, the reader may benefit because we learn about ourselves not only through writing but also through reading. Anyone who has picked up a book that has resonated with them can understand how reading just one passage can feel life-changing, and why would that be limited to edited works? Stream-of-consciousness writing is raw, unfiltered, and free which I would argue creates even more space to learn about ourselves and each other.

Make Yourself Presentable

Not everyone would be comfortable sharing this type of writing. The internet is one place that I would at least edit spelling errors before posting a stream-of-consciousness-style writing. There are too many people who are far too interested in criticizing the small technical errors to avoid looking to the whole and accepting it into their mind to open a dialogue. I would also probably change names in case of the unlikely even that friends and family stumbled onto the blog, especially if I were trying to be anonymous. The way we write diaries and journals is changed the moment the prospect of someone else reading that writing arises. When we keep a hand-written diary in our home, the greatest risk is often that someone in our house – with whom we likely share some level of personal thought with already – will read it. When we cross the boundary to the internet, we are truly opening ourselves up to the whole world. Given the large number of blogs available on the internet, it is somewhat unlikely that a blog would come to be seen by so many. The possibility alone, though, is enough to unconsciously affect our writing choices, even if subtly so, just as when we are about town we may take extra measures to ensure that we are “presentable” as compared to when we are lounging about the house.