Brand Me.

So yeah, Brand Me.

I’m lucky, I suppose – the first wave of a new generation that has grown up on the internet. Luckily I don’t have to deal with too many dodgy photos on Facebook or salubrious scandalous angsty blogs that I’ve written as a teenager. Those problems are still to come for the kids a few years younger than me. I will say that politics will get interesting in twenty years.

I’ve always been quite me online – I’ve mostly gone by my name, it makes me more accountable to myself. No chance of me being an idiot and then getting found it for it. I’d like to think that ALBOWIEB and Twitter and Flickr and whatever else it is that I do are a fair reflection of what and who I am. Sometimes I lament the fact that I’m turning myself into a persona, but I’ve got real life and different situations to mix it up a bit. I don’t think you’re getting anything else than many people who know me.

It’s been a rocky ride, though, blogging. There are people I’ve fallen out with, relationships that have become strained because of a momentary indiscretion. Suddenly what you would have said to someone in passing but confided on your website is a thing. You have to be careful, bear these things in mind. The tone has shifted over the years – in 2005 when I started ALBOWIEB I was a slip of a final year student, doing things that final students do – messing up my essays and deciding to run to be students’ union president. The internet felt like a small place back then, but it bites you on the arse and suddenly it feels bigger.

Google happens and suddenly anyone who has ever heard your name has access to your thoughts and your pictures and life. In the back of my head I try and write posts for my Grandma – there are things I post that I would probably try and slip by her, but it’s good that I sit and think for 15 minutes whether I really want to do a poxy little post with the word ‘tits’ in it that probably isn’t even that funny in the grand scheme of things. Too often I look back at old posts and think that I’m a bit of a twat and I can’t write. The trick is not to look at old posts.

Thankfully I’ve made a conscious decision that I want to go into the lines of work where I’ll be allowed to be myself. I would literally just die if I wasn’t allowed to be me. I enjoy being me, I enjoy sharing being me. My head is a fun place on the whole – and if I can brighten one person’s day by being here, or give another something to think about for a few seconds...then I’ve done my job, I’m happy.

That’s Brand Me, and every little helps, no?