Prompt: "About Me" Page

This prompt was provided by Mel, who started the whole Prompt-ly list in the first place and I’m so grateful to her for doing it.

Look at your “about me” section if you have one. Muse for a moment (in a blog post) on what you chose to include… or what you left out. Does your “about me” page really show who you are? What could an outsider learn about your personality from your page? (Mine, in bullet points, shows what a neat-freak I am.)

I obviously haven’t really looked at my „about me” section, which wrote in early 2008 and haven’t really edit afterwards. I just found two typos *headdesk* I’ve edited those now at least, but there might be more? Anyway…

I started the page with some basic stats: gender, age, marital status, location.
Why did I do that? When I start reading a new blog I tend to want to find those basic facts out about the writer, so it only felt natural to include it in my own page. Marital status definitely is not a necessary information *g*, but I at least like to know the gender and age of the writer and I’m also always interested in where the writer is located- The wonderful thing about the internet is that it’s so easy to meet and get to know people from all over the world, so to me it makes complete sense to include this information n the „about me” page.

Then there is looooong paragraph about my blogging history, which seems so superfluous these days. I wrote it after I had moved my blog to wordpress.com and switched from writing in German to writing in English and I obviously felt the need to explain why. Looking back it feels like I wanted to justify why I did move and switch languages. And to be honest I think I actually did feel like I had to justify and account for my decision. Which is really stupid, because this was and still is my place on the world wide web and here I can choose and do what I like. I don’t have to justify or explain or apologize for anything here. Except if I ever might cross a line with a post, but I think that hasn’t happened yet.

From the „about me” page and my current analysis of it you might already get the idea that I’m not the most confident or self-assured person. And you might be right. In fact I’m lacking in self-esteem a lot of times, even though it isn’t a big of a problem as it has been during my teenage years or adolescence.

I also included the story behind my nickname, which I think will stay on the „about me” page in the future. Because this page will be overhauled ASAP. The lack of any real information about me is actually bothering me now, when I’m taking a closer look on what I wrote more than three years ago. I did change my twitter „about me” page just a few weeks ago and I really should update this page here as well.

What didn’t I include and why did I leave these details out?
Pictures or more details personal information. Like real name, what I do for a living and such. There is just one word to explain the lack of those information: Paranoia ;-) (Goes hand in hand with the low self-esteem, maybe). When I started sharing personal stories or thoughts with folks online more than 10 years ago it happened on a fan message board, and back then I didn’t mind that my nickname and real name could easily be connected via any kind of internet search.
That changed later on once I started working in my first real job or took part in various different honorary activities and I didn’t want anyone who might look me up on the internet find this personal stuff. Of course this problem could be more easily solved by just not putting any personal stuff online. But that would contradict the following still valid statement:

I always preferred writing to talking. But I also always felt a strong need to communicate or to put my thoughts into words, so starting a blog someday was inevitable.

So far it worked out fine to keep the personal and the maybe more professional and „real” parts of my online life separate. Not that the personal me on this blog isn’t the real me, because it is. Real and personal and I want to keep it that way. That reminds me that the updated „about me” page has to include why I choose this title for this blog. For reasons unknown I cut that explanation from a former version of the „about me” page, at least I’m pretty sure that I explained it once before. And I really should include some more personal stuff to give new readers a glimpse of what kind of person I am.

So, I guess „updating ‘about me’ page” will got right on top of my To-Do-List.