Walking the Thin Line of Privacy

10 years ago, most of us didn’t have online personalities.  Only the more tech or computer savvy among us tooled along on the information highway, coming up with online handles that defined us in chat rooms, relationships that  might occasionally carry over into email or IM, but ultimately made us known to only a small segment of people.  In a way, it was easier than to hide behind these online personas.  Now, our identities online are no longer personas, they are extensions of our physical, everyday selves.  I myself exist on a range of social networks, connected across the interwebs via this blog, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, email and random other services for which I have registered and forgotten.  My job is as a website and social media manager, so a portion of myself extends to that company’s online persona as well.  So many facets of ourselves, how is it possible to have privacy?

To me, privacy is not so much an issue as the emotions behind it.  Many people don’t want their locations tracked, don’t want their personal and professional lives to intersect.  They are ok with one group knowing that they ate breakfast at the Cracker Barrel, but would rather the other set not know that they have a special fondness for Cracker Barrel’s cheesy hashbrowns.  And I can understand that mentality, I suppose.  I am realistic enough to know that spending my day monitoring Facebook and Twitter feeds mean that I have become numb to the lines between personal and professional.  I am surrounded by people whose lives are intertwined.  I don’t so much care anymore who knows where I am, what I had for breakfast, my thoughts on social media management or Sandra Bullock’s recently publicized divorce from Jesse James.

At the end of the day, I care about the emotion behind it all.   We all preach that privacy is no longer an option in an age when all of us are constantly electronically connected, but what about the privacy of feelings?  A bridge that I don’t think I could ever cross would be to broadcast or discuss my own inner monologue, or my true feelings on areas that I’m sensitive about.  Disagreements with friends or family, hurt feelings, misunderstandings…all of those more tender emotions are things that I would never and could never broadcast.  I am amazed when I read articles about couples who fight via Facebook, breakups that happen over Twitter, raw, vulnerable emotions splashed across the web for everyone to see.  In all of this, I suppose that is what I understand the least.  Social media and where it’s heading is a passion; learning about it, discussing it, probing the sociological patterns behind it all comprise my day, and led me to the position I am in now.  That place where peoplle are comfortable exposing their innermost feelings…that is the part of social media that scares me.  

How alone are those of us who cannot do that?  Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Ray Bradbury, Margaret Atwood, even Lois Lowry and Madeleine L’Engle…all these author’s envisioned futures where we were both completely connected and disconnected from each other.  Futures where technological efficiency has replaced human emotions.  How easy to feel that you have a million friends and acquaintances that stretch across the internet, yet how awful to feel that there is not a single person you can talk to truly, deeply, in any of those places when your feelings are hurt.

The Service Waiting Room at the Dealership

People watching is always fun.  Airports are generally a good place for this, as they see all walks of life, all ages, all levels of affluence and influence, or lack there of.   Similarly, your mid-level car dealership service areas offer the same level of people watching.  You might not find this range of individuals at the BMW or VW dealerships.  But at a car brand that attracts many different levels of economic standing and many different age demographics, you’re pretty much in luck.  This applies to Toyota and Honda, in particular, and perhaps Chevy and Ford as well.  Especially on a Saturday morning.

I, myself, am at the Honda dealership.  I’ve very rarely found it difficult to write, especially when the desire and time are present, as writing for my own enjoyment is not something I have a lot of opportunity for anymore.  Yet here, in the midst of this very interesting mix of humanity, I find my words coming in starts and stops, and I find myself becoming progressively frustrated at the strings of sentences I am producing.  Observational humor is something that I relish and excel at, and when sitting in the movie-theater arranged area that is the waiting room should only produce a wealth of wonderful ideas.  Yet here I sit, bemoaning my lack of inspiration (how can that be, you should see the people around me!) and my mind wanders back to this blog, and my plans for it.

Recently I began posting what is sure to be a very long bucket list.  Recording the things I want to do and see in list form appeals to my list-making soul, and will someday afford me the ability to cross items off my list.  Let me tell you, there is little more satisfying.  So then where does this blog go?  For life in general, I have recently been consumed by a number of desires that I want to implement, and am struggling with how.

Fitness, and that inherent lifestyle, is important to me.  Yoga is something that I love, as are cycling, and running, and going to the gym.  But I find it difficult to balance all these desires.  I have this ideal lifestyle in my head, where I don’t love junk food, and I spring from bed pop-tart like at 5am so I can get in a run or a gym session before leaving for work.  Thus far, that has somehow not happened.  I feel like I have a mental block that is keeping me from figuring out how to work my runs, rides, and mat practices into a schedule that already includes several evenings at work a week and a long work day.  How does all that get balanced?  I suppose it’s just good self-discipline, which I know I possess, but which seems to be missing lately.

To my original point, I am not sure where I would like to go with this blog.  I love the idea of recording my journey back to yoga, but that seems  a bit behind if I have already spent the last three months doing that and not recording it.

So essentially, stay tuned.  As much as I am sure that everyone cares ever so much about my daily thoughts, I know I need a focus, which is part of the reason my writing here has been so intermittent.  So perhaps inspiration will find me.  Let’s hope it’s soon.