Personal, Professional

I'm about to do something a little frightening. Bear with me.

A few days ago, my three-year-old daughter came to me crying. She had to go potty, but there was a monster in the bathroom. She was terrified. Specifically: Cookie Monster was in there, and I had to keep her safe from him. She did not buy my explanation that she would be safe from Cookie Monster because she was not a cookie, so I investigated. 

It was her blue washcloth hanging on the towel bar.

So! Did you see that? That terrifying act I just performed? That was a personal anecdote about my family, and possibly the first one I've ever written here that wasn't specifically about games or stories and how my children interact with them. That wasn't relevant, if you see. But was it a good idea? Do the readers who come here care one way or the other about the goings-on in my personal life? Or was sharing that one tiny story an act that was deeply unprofessional?

I keep thinking about these questions. I can't decide, so I'm taking it to you and asking you what you think. Should I keep a church-and-state kind of division between my personal and professional lives? But then where does Twitter fall? Or Facebook, where my Twitter posts are linked? What about LinkedIn, which also grabs my Twitter feed? 

Given that the work I do is profoundly personal, does it even make any sense to talk about a division between my personal and professional lives? I used to think so, but I'm less and less sure as more colleagues have become close friends, and as the edges of my internet footprint begin to overlap by a wider margin every day. My life isn't one of clear boundaries and defining lines. It's made in a single, whole piece. Everything is personal to me, and everything is professional as well. 

For a long time I kept two separate blogs. One of them was this one. If you were to visit the archives, you'd see it's heavy in opining, analysis, and idle speculation. My other blog was strictly personal, and mostly about kids, cooking and housework -- a mommyblog, if you will. But due to a confluence of time pressure, technical issues, offloading to Twitter, and sheer slackitude, the entire year of 2009 went by without an update over there. 

I wonder now if that separation has outlived its usefulness anyway. Or does this strictly-professional internet presence do me good? Would I lose professional standing if more people knew about my dirty dishes? (Do I want to work with people who would find a more complete picture of me off-putting?) I know other writers I respect and admire have done well with blending personal and professional. I speak of course of Elizabeth Bear and John Scalzi, Neil Gaiman, Jay Lake. 

So this is just one big solicitation for opinions, I guess. How do you manage the distinctions between personal and professional, if any? What do you do? How does it work, and what would you recommend?

Comments

[John Evans]

I have my blog about game design stuff, which is professional, or at least has pretensions to being academic ( http://www.chaoseed.com/garden/ ); and then the rest of my online presence (another blog, Twitter, Facebook) is pretty much personal. Of course, I occasionally link from one to another, so it's not like the membrane is completely impermeable. The reason I keep this separation is just to keep myself *organized*. If someone wants to read more of my game design thoughts, they go to my game design blog. If they want more personal stuff, they can look at Twitter or Livejournal. So, each site has a *purpose*, and that purpose lets readers know what to expect.

So, if you think that personal things are important to the subjects you're writing about, go ahead. You ask, "Do I want to work with people who would find a more complete picture of me off-putting?"; I think the answer is "No". :)

[John Scalzi]

Actually, I'm personable, not personal -- I divulge almost no information about the minutiae of my day-to-day life as it involves my wife and child, and when I do, it's because I've gotten approval from them to do so. So what that means is that what you see on a "personal" front is actually pretty highly managed. As it should be, because a) the other people in my life deserve not to have their lives splattered about the Internet without their permission; b) some things aren't anyone else's business anyway.

So my suggestion to you is simply to ask those around you if it's okay to write about them, each time you do so in a specific rather than generalized way. I don't worry about clearing it with Athena when I mention I have a daughter or if I'm talking about the school she goes to; I do clear it when I'm talking about something that happened to HER at school. But I've found that family members appreciate that you ask, and in particular with children, it's useful for them to feel that they have some control over how the world sees them.

Your daughter might be a shade too young at three to grasp all that, so for now use your best judgment, and also let her know what you're doing and let her be aware of it so you can see how she responds. As soon as she has an opinion one way or another, that's when you start incorporating it into what you do online.

[Psy]

It's like most things in this world: Gauge your audience. I have two twitter accounts (personal & public). I treat LinkedIn like I would treat a resume.

My audience (ie customer base) is VERY big business, and they expect a competent nerd that's well dressed, a professional guy with nice shoes who smells good -- or at least doesn't smell bad. So, I put on that facade when required, but I'm usually sitting at home, at my desk, in my underwear, attending conference calls, answering eMails, and occasionally even doing real work.

That's not to say that the people I work with don't know anything about my personal life -- but I establish THAT side of the relationship after I've already won the business -- because people hire me for a result, not because I'm a 'great guy' (even though I *am* awesome).

I'm not sure what your industry is like, or expects. Funny stories from real life make you human, a real person -- you need to decide if that helps or hinders your ability to close business in your area of expertise.

[Brian Enigma]

I have to side with the "it depends on your audience" answer. But considering I am one of the audience, maybe that's a non-answer. I find I am running into a similar problem, but from the opposite direction. My blog started as a "what did I do today" and "who's going to Lisa's party this weekend" and "this is what I thought of xyz's latest album and abc's latest film" sort of collection of mundane ramblings. It started on LiveJournal, if that tells you anything. I have slowly moved the focus to include much more academic and project/code-oriented content, but still have a good amount of day-to-day stuff in there. I briefly considered creating a second blog for the smart stuff, but came up with many reasons not to: people know and subscribe to netninja.com already and may not be inclined to subscribe to yet another blog, starting a new blog from scratch with purely intellectual content seemed like a daunting task that was just asking for writer's block, etc. What I ended up doing was to make heavy use of categories and pages. That way, important intellectual posts could be quickly and easily found and day-to-day content would fall to the background. Signal and noise. I'm also posting much less day-to-day content, which is partly a conscious decision and partly laziness.

I, for one, would welcome more personal/anecdotal content, but do make it easy for newcomers to find the intellectual content you'd like to promote.

[an alex]

hi andrea, i'm a casual lurker on your site.

personally, i'd approach this from the standpoint of the professional context. what I mean to say is, you could ask yourself, is this anecdote about your life related to the context of what you're writing about? does your daughter encountering the cookie monster have to do with the topic at hand? did this event spark an epiphany for some game design process or idea?

i don't think it's that you should side with the audience, (which imo can sometimes lead to just selling yourself to get reads) but rather not to alienate them by switching contexts midway.

One moment we're here to read about wisdomic game industry philosophy and the next we're hearing about what kind of tomato you used for dinner. That can be quite disorienting unless that was the original intention for your blog.

But that's just a matter of consistency. I think that above all, what really matters is to be sure of what you want, and just write. the truism in that act will abscond any flaws or discrepancies in the writing.

hope this helps:)

[Andrea]

Just to follow up: I'm still not sure, really, what to do about all of this. I might be trying some new things here, though, in terms of talking about my creative process and goals, and maybe just a little bit more about other big-picture stuff as it effects me. Hmmm. This is really the big question of our time, isn't it? Persona management and overlapping social spheres.