Nothing Personal, but…
With my name written all over this site, you could be forgiven for thinking my web blog would include personal stuff, but it doesn’t.
Some people, (including friends), have kindly visited this site only to never return once they realise it has little about me and is mostly about Web Design (the word ‘geeky’ is also thrown at me at that point!)
So, why isn’t this a personal site about me?
Here are the main reasons:
The site is about my Web Design Services, and the blog is about Web Design and web-related stuff.
Blog articles on the site are aimed at people who know about Web Design, or are new to Web Design, and also to demonstrate clearly to people (including potential clients) that I have some idea of what I’m talking about (re: Web Design). Personal posts really don’t match any of those intentions which is why they won’t get featured.
Sure, I’m personable and friendly enough, but I’m also quite a private person too.
2008 in particular saw me lock-down a lot of my Online privacy while still trying to use a few Social Networks at the same time, but I might have been too effective because I also made it hard for new people to get to know me better in the first place! One person’s comment was “Yeah, he does Web Design, but who is he?” - fair question!
Throughout 2009, I warmed-up though and I’m getting more open all the time (you just need to get to know me aside from this web site to find that out!) :)
Personal Views will certainly be expressed though.
My blog articles will hopefully still convey my own personal (and often colourful!) opinions, not associated with anyone else’s views, about certain topics. I just won’t be using the site as a platform for personal rants/praise about non-web stuff, well, I’ll try not to! ;)
I will write in a personal way, because that is my style, but I’ll stop short of using open profanity all over the place because it’s not what I want clients to read and I’m sure it wouldn’t look good to a lot of people who don’t know me very well. For friends (who know me well enough), playfully-used vulgarity will still be used with you elsewhere, haha!
I’ve chosen to make some, small distinction between ‘Public me’ (this site) and ‘Private me’, that’s not the popular choice, many Web Designers freely incorporate personal posts on their web blogs and it hasn’t done them much harm. Writing too personally on the Web can lull some professionals in to a false sense of security though: don’t we keep reading in the media how people keep writing stuff that they later deeply regret? Hopefully, I’m minimising my chances of getting bitten on the arse by my own words, but it is making me look a bit anti-social along the way (and I’m not at all).
Hey, thanks for visiting the site and reading this post! :)
Note: This article has been updated from one I wrote originally on 04/01/2009. This is my first post on the site since March 2009 and is associated with ‘Project 52’. More information about Project 52: http://project52.info/
This is a good idea, differentiating personal from public, and between fun and business. More users should follow this idea. Hmmm… I also should.
Thanks for putting your perspective on this issue into words.