This is a really helpful post. I’m transitioning professionally from being solely a music therapist (where it’s not advisable to post anything personal at all and really it’s better to be hidden) to also including early career academia and hopefully more writing. Suddenly I need to show a bit more of myself. Currently feels very unnatural and constantly up for debate as to where the line is.
Ohh yes I can see how disorientating that shift would be. I mentioned in my comment to @eloiserickman above that what I tend to do when I feel this uncertainty is go back to sharing my 'why': why am I doing this work? Why now? What are my hopes to achieve with this work? Why do I believe in it? This is a fairly low risk way of sharing more of myself that somehow 'loosens' things up a little bit. Let me know if that helps.
This is one of my FAVOURITE questions to ponder, not just with social media but with writing generally. I explored the perils of sharing personal experience for my PhD and one of the schools of thought was that you should imagine wearing a sandwich board with the thing you want to share written on it, front and back. Then imagine walking around your workplace, family home, streets near your house wearing it and see how you feel. I suppose social media is a little like the sandwich board - open for all to read.
This sandwich board thing has really made me think...I find it really interesting how, for me, over the years, sharing things via social media has allowed me to say things I would never say out loud (about myself, not criticisms or otherwise of other people). There is a perception of distance from the consequences of what we post that we use to contextualise poor online conduct BUT this dynamic is also at play in how we talk about *ourselves*... mindblown...!
Thanks so much for reading Eloise. It's funny what you say about struggling to share enough of yourself as I've noticed that with my much more defined 'professional' presence on IG I forget to talk about myself as a person, alongside what I post as an 'educator' of sorts. I wonder if that's your 'problem' too. When you have such a clearly defined purpose to your content, it can feel jarring to share more of your human self. Fwiw I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing BUT if you did want to be a little more 'human on the internet' you could try going back to your why (this is what I'm intending to do next week which is 1 year since I deided to pivot my business to supporting writers) - why do you believe so strongly in Children's Right *beyond* the intellectual - what experiences of your own inform your passion and advocacy? In what ways are you being what you needed? These questions require careful consideration first and then you can decide which bits you're willing to share as there may be elements you do not want to share at all. LEt me know if that helps x
This is such a great post Nic! As you know, I’ve really changed how much & what I share over the years (and similarly regret sharing photos of my daughter), though as my boundaries have become stronger I’ve found the flip side is I feel that sometimes I struggle a bit to share *enough* of myself online? I know that I connect best with writers who I feel I’ve gotten to know online - even if that’s an illusion - and need to figure out how to do the same without over sharing...
Yes, this. Exactly! And people underutilize delete and archive buttons.
This is a really helpful post. I’m transitioning professionally from being solely a music therapist (where it’s not advisable to post anything personal at all and really it’s better to be hidden) to also including early career academia and hopefully more writing. Suddenly I need to show a bit more of myself. Currently feels very unnatural and constantly up for debate as to where the line is.
Ohh yes I can see how disorientating that shift would be. I mentioned in my comment to @eloiserickman above that what I tend to do when I feel this uncertainty is go back to sharing my 'why': why am I doing this work? Why now? What are my hopes to achieve with this work? Why do I believe in it? This is a fairly low risk way of sharing more of myself that somehow 'loosens' things up a little bit. Let me know if that helps.
This is one of my FAVOURITE questions to ponder, not just with social media but with writing generally. I explored the perils of sharing personal experience for my PhD and one of the schools of thought was that you should imagine wearing a sandwich board with the thing you want to share written on it, front and back. Then imagine walking around your workplace, family home, streets near your house wearing it and see how you feel. I suppose social media is a little like the sandwich board - open for all to read.
This sandwich board thing has really made me think...I find it really interesting how, for me, over the years, sharing things via social media has allowed me to say things I would never say out loud (about myself, not criticisms or otherwise of other people). There is a perception of distance from the consequences of what we post that we use to contextualise poor online conduct BUT this dynamic is also at play in how we talk about *ourselves*... mindblown...!
Thanks so much for reading Eloise. It's funny what you say about struggling to share enough of yourself as I've noticed that with my much more defined 'professional' presence on IG I forget to talk about myself as a person, alongside what I post as an 'educator' of sorts. I wonder if that's your 'problem' too. When you have such a clearly defined purpose to your content, it can feel jarring to share more of your human self. Fwiw I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing BUT if you did want to be a little more 'human on the internet' you could try going back to your why (this is what I'm intending to do next week which is 1 year since I deided to pivot my business to supporting writers) - why do you believe so strongly in Children's Right *beyond* the intellectual - what experiences of your own inform your passion and advocacy? In what ways are you being what you needed? These questions require careful consideration first and then you can decide which bits you're willing to share as there may be elements you do not want to share at all. LEt me know if that helps x
This is such a great post Nic! As you know, I’ve really changed how much & what I share over the years (and similarly regret sharing photos of my daughter), though as my boundaries have become stronger I’ve found the flip side is I feel that sometimes I struggle a bit to share *enough* of myself online? I know that I connect best with writers who I feel I’ve gotten to know online - even if that’s an illusion - and need to figure out how to do the same without over sharing...