Would the real Patricia Bray please stand up?

[pbray]

I'm wondering how other people manage social media, and the balance between their writing lives and their personal lives. Or do you even see the need for a balance at all?

I suspect this is at least partially my age, or an artifact of my upbringing, but I tend to draw a line between my role as Patricia-the-author versus the other portions of my life. When I joined livejournal, it was to connect with other writers and industry professionals, as we moved off bulletin boards and mailing lists and onto blogs. Over time the lines have blurred, but the primary focus of the blog continues to be the life of Patricia the writer, with occasional rants on the day job or whatever else is going on. On livejournal (or dreamwidth), anyone can friend me, and nearly all of my posts are public.

For the day job, I'm a member of Linkedin. I've had requests from writers to join their Linkedin networks which I always decline. It would be different if my day job was in publishing, but it's not, so the only overlap is me. Linkedin has my day job contact information, which is appropriate only in relationship to Corporate!Patricia.

Then there's Facebook, which I joined because that's where the family was posting the photos of my nieces and nephews. My Facebook friends are limited to real life friends and family, and all of my information and posts are restricted to that group. This is partially because I can't afford the timesink of following a huge number of people on Facebook, and also because the family stuff posted there isn't appropriate for a wider audience. I continually get friends requests on Facebook which I usually wind up ignoring unless it's someone that I know personally. But then I feel bad about ignoring them. I've considered setting up a fan Facebook page, which would then be open to anyone who wanted to friend me, but do I really have the time to manage two separate Facebook accounts?

As to Twitter, I suspect if I had a Twitter account it would push me over the edge.

So, how about the rest of you? How do you manage your presence on the interwebs?

Comments

[vespican.livejournal.com]

I joined Live Journal three years or so ago to be able to post a comment on a journal that had restricted anonymous comments. Since I had the page I decided to post a little about my efforts to become a published writer. That has expanded to include other areas. I recently joined my first Live Journal Community, and find that that and the relatively small list of LJ Friends keeps me occupied for too much time. I'd never get any of the other stuff done that I use the computer for if I had Face Book, Twitter, or any of the other social networks.
Dave

[pbray.livejournal.com]

It's the time sink that will kill you. My LJ friendslist is small--there are lots of interesting folks posting great stuff out there, but I don't have time to keep up with it all.