All right

You celebrate your 4 year anniversary at Dave and Buster's and the Melting Pot and my small blogosphere is vacillating about blogging.

What do I use it for? Whose going to be looking at it? Do I have any dirt on the internetz?

As much as I'm a fan for personal safety on the next, I'm also a fan of seperation of personal and professional. Granted, this is something internal to me, but it's extention is far reaching.

I keep this blog for personal thoughts, opinions, and the usual attempt to choke everyone with surveys/quizes. I did have a couple posts in the beginning about work and removed them because I didn't comfortable talking about work rantings on a blog that I also talk about "peanut butter," driving annoyances, books I've read, and burritos with onion. It's fun, loose, but with a bit o' self control when it comes to work related activities.

Enter in Little Blue's blog. I didn't feel comfortable mixing/mashing posts about potty training, adventures with the daycare girlfriend, having fun at the "play place" or listing his firsts. It was fun the first couple times, but I also felt that I might be stealing some of Pink's thunder, so we created LB's blog to post about his adventures into manhood while I could still keep Blue Pamphlet about Blue.

Enter in the work related blog, which doen't exist. I've got an inner nick picky SOB part of me that says if I'm going to blog about work and make it work readable (in current project terms, stuff about Downloadable Audio Books, my Training Database conversion that's being a PITA, upcoming Sirsi upgrade features, etc.) then I should be getting paid to do it. The trouble is, I'm a department of one and I don't have time to be dancing around to meetings all week administering training functions and creating the content/reports that come out. So, I don't. I work the schedule that being a trainer requires of me, then I'm gone. My supervisor and I even discussed a newsletter, much like LIT has done, I just don't simply have the time. Plus, who wants one more newsletter to read?

Besides, if you want to quote policy, no staff person should be reading their email at a public workstation. I know I get on average 30-80 emails a day, and I don't want to contribute to the clutter.

So, I don't. But, if I did, then I would create one, but it wouldn't be under this username, nor would I ever link anything back to this blog. As Pink and I just discussed, "keep your personal life personal, keep your work life about work." And, it would have my full name, work contact information. *gasp* Yeah, I know I said not to do it, and even mentioned how someone could stalk us library folk, but the fact is when you want to be helpful in the library community, you've got to be open and visible.

Now, I know I've given some of you a hard time at work for being blog crazy and creating a bazillion blogs, but now consider Little Blue's blog my admittance to your wise leadership.

When Veggie and I taught our first Cyber-Six Pack class, one woman blatently said, "Why would anyone want to blog? Who would want to put there personal information up on the internet to read? Who would be that dumb? This just seems ridiculous!" (You can imagine Veggie's eyes nearly burst into flames when she heard that question :) )The point is you don't have to, you can make it private and have your own personal online diary, be as anonymous as you want and rant about something, or do a search for people who have similar hobbies and interests.

Or, as Infocommuner mentioned, use it to get your name out there. People do Google you, and you can rest assured I've Googled you just to sate my curiosity. (Psychologist/people watcher part of me). Heck, resume's are rarely read any more at larger companies. They're scanned into a database and searched.

In closing...Pink and I had this conversation once we realized people we knew would be reading these. The anonymity is gone, and in some cases, some of the fun.

In truth, you need to decide who your writing for. If your doing it for yourself, then keep on trucking, just consider how personal/private you want to make it. If your doing professionally, then your doing it for the glimmer of hope, notoriaty, and to start up a dialog with other professionals...just be wary of what you say. Big brother (or some crazy curious psychologist) is looking.