It's What I Do, not Who I Am.

Time for a bit of navel-gazing. Introspection, in blog form. Don't like it? Wait a day. Or follow this link. I'll talk games or movies or something tomorrow.

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I don't blog about work. It's been a rule since I started this blog. Why? Well, there was a blog entry which explains some of the reasons.

There is a deeper aspect, though. And it came up during a sermon recently [though I won't be discussing faith today.] The pastor asked us to picture in our minds meeting someone new. What's the first thing that happens, after you exchange names? Someone asks:

"So, what do you do?"

It's natural. There's nothing wrong with it. People's jobs affect their lives deeply, and it provides a substantial source of the material we can discuss with one another. When someone asks me, I tell them, and I might answer a few shallow questions about it. But then I'm done.

In typical social situations, I would prefer to get to know someone, and to have them get to know me, at an extra-professional level. It's true that "who I am" had something to do with how I came to be employed at "what I do," but "who I am" is considerably different from "what I do."

So, in this blog, I write about the other parts of my life. And generally speaking, on Facebook I do the same. Oh, the lines blur a bit on Facebook because several of my Facebook friends are connected to me through my job. And I got into Twitter in the first place because of work, so I will often use it while on business trips. (Though I honestly wonder if it's very useful...) In general, though, I'd prefer to leave work at work, and let my blogging mind focus on the many other things that make my life worth living.

As I mentioned more than a year ago, that's also one of the reasons this blog touches on so many topics. Though I get more discussion from blog entries about politics than about games or movies or faith, (especially since I started publishing the blog as Facebook notes) my politics is not a large enough part of my personality to make it a focus of the blog. An recurring topic: yes. A focus: no.

If you know about my work, you know a piece of me, but just a piece.

And you are like that too!

If I know you from work, I only know a part of you. When I encounter you outside of work, I want to know other things about you. I want to ask "What are your Stilts?" (And if you get that reference, you've been reading my blog for a long, long time. Or I've talked to you about my views on work/life balance. {Or you followed the link.})

So, since this blog was created to give me a reason to write, and a venue in which to communicate my thoughts to those who care to read it, I will continue to use it for those two purposes. And, because those who work with me have plenty of opportunity to know the "work side" of me, I don't write about work, here.

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That's enough of that. Tomorrow, back to the normal seemingly random topic of the day.