the Future of the Web
  • Home
  • Hire Us
  • Articles
  • About
  • Contact
  • Your voice

    Apr 25 2006

    I was worried at first when I started my personal blog. I knew that all my friends and family would be reading it. How would I write a blog post so that it would be suitable for both my grandmother and my long time friends?

    I was even more worried when I started this blog. I was going to have some kind of professional persona on top of my personal persona. Now my friends and family could read this site, and strangers and colleagues could read my personal site. How could I possibly express myself consistently to such a wide range of people?!

    Well, it turned out to be not a big deal at all. It forced me to do something pretty great: it forced me to be myself. It forced me to be honest and transparent. I can't pretend to be something I'm not, because anybody can call me on it. Not on this site, nor on my personal site.

    It took some time to get used to it, I suppose. I shared some things on my personal site I wouldn't normally share with everyone, but afterwards it was totally normal. I've also expressed ideas on here I wouldn't normally talk about with friends and family and I'm glad I've done it.

    So when people tell you to "find your voice" when writing, they're not suggesting you try to create a brand new voice. Instead, you need to find your voice, the one true voice inside you, and share it with the world.

    Tags: blogs personality writing family friends professional
    View 2 Comments | Add a comment
  • Comments

    1. Joe at 12:33am on April 26, 2006

    Hey Jesse,

    I'm glad you "found your voice".  It's something we all have to learn, whether we blog or not.

    There is no pretending on the internet, so we might as well just be ourselves.

    Joe

    2. The Ultimate Groupie at 4:57am on April 26, 2006

    Good for you!  I struggled when I started my personal site (http://fullchangejar.blogspot.com).  I started out pretty conservative, sticking with what I thought my parents would approve of.  I did not even tell any of my friends that I had the site. 

    Then, I became a rebel and started posting things that my friends would not approve off.  But, if I did not, I would be betraying my voice. So, eventually, I told one friend, then another, then my co-workers, and now everyone knows. 

    So far, no one has complained.  I get the odd look once in awhile when I talk about co-workers, but I figure that since these are things I say in front of them, they shouldn't be too shocked.  My recent posting tbere about anorexia was sparked by a co-worker, and although I was insulting, she did not seemed too bothered.

    Add a Comment

    Note: HTML tags and entities will be converted so that they are displayed as you type them. This means if you type in <em>, people will see <em>, and if you type &lt;em&gt;, people will see &lt;em&gt;.

  • Request a Quote

  • Jesse Skinner

    Jesse Skinner
    • Hire Me
    • About Me
    • Email Me
    • RSS Feed RSS Icon
  • Recent Articles

    • Parse Accept-Language to detect a user's language
    • Twitter
    • Three years of The Future of the Web
    • Saving data to a file with PHP
    • Easy web scraping with PHP
    • See all the articles
    • IBM: Where and when to use Ajax
    • Code Igniter 1.6.0 Released
    • Update a Dev Site Automatically with Subversion
    • JavaScript Functions are Variables
    • See All...
  • Categories

    • javascript (37)
    • links (19)
    • about (18)
    • web (14)
    • server (10)
    • html (10)
    • css (8)
    • carnival (7)
    • browsers (7)
    • design (4)
    • seo (4)
    • ads (4)
    • standards (4)
    • events (4)
    • work (4)
  • Older Articles

    • May 2008
    • April 2008
    • February 2008
    • January 2008
    • December 2007
    • November 2007
    • September 2007
    • August 2007
    • July 2007
    • June 2007
    • May 2007
    • April 2007
    • March 2007
    • February 2007
    • January 2007
    • December 2006
    • November 2006
    • October 2006
    • September 2006
    • August 2006
    • July 2006
    • June 2006
    • May 2006
    • April 2006
    • March 2006
    • February 2006
    • January 2006
    • December 2005
    • November 2005
    • October 2005
    • September 2005
    • August 2005
    • April 2005
    • See All...
Copyright © 2008 Jesse Skinner | CSS | XHTML | RSS | Help | Impressum | Cutie Quilts | Internet Blog Top Sites