My “Proivate” Life

Personal and Private Lives on the Internet

At home, we have one mailbox out on the street that holds the few pieces of mail we get these days. Those pieces of mail are people trying to communicate with me. No matter what the thing is, it is just someone trying to communicate something.

In the digital age, we may have a couple personal email boxes, a work email box, a Teams box, a Facebook box, an Instagram box… Lots of boxes with nothing more than people trying to communicate something to us. In the digital age, there is just a lot more communication coming our way.

Personally, I don’t think we do well at handling all that stuff. We get too much. Some we call spam, some we miss because it is buried under a ton of other things, some we try to keep in a safe place. I think we are overwhelmed with all the darn mail/communication.

These days I only want to be places that serve me well, and that I feel like I have a healthy relationship with. I quit Twitter a couple years back. Facebook too. I am not very good at working on Teams with my colleagues. I only write very short and to the point emails to people. I have a hard time communicating what I value in those spaces. I can’t explain that.

What I do know, it that my private life and my profession life seem to be the same thing digitally. My Flickr account is a mix of personal and “private” images. My blog is a mess of the two things. My Mastodon account is a soup of my life.

I have fewer mailboxes as a result. It is just easier to manage, and I think I enjoy the communication more.

Marshall McLuhan once noted that, “In the electric age we wear all mankind as our skin.” While I may wear different types of clothes in the office and at home, my skin remains the same. I am just me. At work or play, I am just me and my skin.

Since 2020 I have also really started to focus on creating communication in physical spaces more and making those happen more often. It is a challenge with remote work and all. Often, I am completely alone in my office. Even when I am here with others, they are often on Zoom calls and I am kinda, “not even there” as far as they are concerned. It is strange.

I created this some years ago and for the most part, it still explains where I am today. Getting better, but still damaged.