You know the Cheers song… “sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name.” Have you ever felt the opposite? Have you ever wished you had a person who didn’t know your story that you could just soundboard off of?

I tend to be a person who compartmentalizes my life. When I was in college I had a friend who was in the majority of my design classes. We used to talk fonts, professors and laugh about ugly logos. I’d rarely discussed typography with my roommate because she was studying Education. However, the roommate and I used to talk psychology and people watching and have deep life discussions. When I was in college, I had 6 close girl friends. Each one just as important but all very different.

Now that I’m “in the real world”, I find that I miss my compartmentalized life. I work from home so I don’t really have the day to day coworker interaction. I also feel like in the later twenties everyone’s lives are so different. I can listen to stories of my single parent friends talking about their toddlers. But, I don’t really get it. Nor do my married for many years friends know what year 1 of a relationship is like for me. Same goes for myself with my single friends.

When I first started blogging I was speaking to the nothingness. Writing to an invisible audience. Consequently, I felt free to be and say whatever I wanted. I think I may have even, back in the day, posted negative things about my then job/coworkers. There was this one time… oh wait not gonna do it.

Now that I work and breath and live in social media. And I know that current and past employers, people I’ve met at networking events, people I went to high school with, and my boyfriend’s family read what I put out there so there’s a filter. The a kind of silence in me, that feels like… an echo from knowing everyone (and no one in particular) is listening.

Does talking about my personal relationships further my end goal with this platform of communication (blogging, twitter, facebook, you name it)? Do I know what that goal is anymore? Does talking about how much I love my job but how weird it is to feel like a recluse, working away in a coffee shop full of strangers, on some days weaken my personal brand? Am I making a difference in someone’s life by talking about ME or should I be all about the big picture?

Those are the questions… I don’t have the answers today. But that’s the joy of blogging. Sometimes you have the answer and sometimes your readers do and sometimes it’s better to stay in the question.

sidenote: I just discovered this post hiding in my “to blog one-day” folder and decided today was as good of a day as any to go ahead and post it.