Blogging with Style

I can't tell you how many times I explain my blogging to people and they simply don't get it. I think it's the combination of the fact that I am blogging as a work activity and that I write about personal things that have them all confused. As time moves on, I believe that the workplace becomes more "personal". We think about things like "balance", and as companies struggle to reach hiring goals because of dwindling talent pools, I believe that companies will continue to espouse some of the personal aspects of the workplace; lifestyle benefits, flex time, events that include families.

I also consider the fact that peoples concept of self are tied to their work. If someone asks you "what are you?", it's pretty likely that your job title is going to be included in the answer. Simply, the work persona and the non-work persona are merging, in my opinion. Which is good for me because I find work highly personal; establishing relationships, sharing successes. People want to know each other.

But when I tell people about my blogging, I still think that the concept is relatively new to them in a work context. "You blog about personal stuff at work?" Yup, because I am me at home and at work. I know that our corporate culture lends itself well to this "over-sharing" (OK, maybe not "over" but relative to other companies and blogs, I think we are pretty open). And that works well for me. I'm pretty much an open book. You can generally tell what I think about something by the expression on my face; I'm practicing a more neutral expression these days.

So Cornelius wrote a post about blogs and language and the difference between corporate blogs and corporate personal blogs. I think I am just going to send this link to people when they seem confused about what I am doing here. One part of his post that I thought was interesting was the part about the writing being about "inner" (thoughts) versus "outer" (situations). That stinkin' inner voice is what keeps me up at night and annoys me during the day and blogging might be a therapy to release it. I wonder how many personal bloggers would tell you that they have a very strong inner voice.