Radzster.net

About

Blogging is an interesting social experiment and it can teach you a lot about yourself and your place in the world. But I’m a very reluctant blogger…

I’m a 30-something, female, happily married, living in Sydney, working in IT.
That’s the short and “acceptable” version.

I guess I’m a complicated person (Thank goodness! Beats boring…). People tend to see me as extrovert, assertive, very opinionated… Some even say arrogant. But actually, most of the time, I’m surprisingly withdrawn and private, and feel very “out of place” and awkward when trying to mingle and socialize during some or other event. I’m also not a native English speaker, and in my nervous attempts to make “meaningful conversation”, I would hear myself saying something and think: “For god sake woman? Shut up already! What the hell are you waffling about?”. Uh… embarrassing and unpleasant, to say the least.

Due to my “complicated personality”, I’ve always shied away from “putting myself out there”. So, even tough I’m online 80% of the time, have mostly worked in IT since 1999, and am quite familiar with building websites and blogging technology, no site or blog ever materialised… Previous attempts to “get into it” failed: I registered this domain in 2006, but it was left barren for almost 2 years.
Ok, the hosting fee was not a total loss. It proved useful little testing ground for my SEO experiments, when I was working as a search engine optimisation specialist.

So why go “full out” now?
No choice… I work in IT and am expected to have an “online presence”.
But as a former SEO, I realize that whatever you put out there, starts to lead a life of it’s own… The internet is a morphing beast. There’s no controlling it. Fascinating and frightening at the same time.

And the main problem is, if you are surrounded by people who are so immersed in the latest online “thing”, and don’t see any problem with sharing lots of personal information online (also increasingly addicted to continuously updating and transmitting their hyperconnected “life stream”), you WILL end up being a part of it. Whether you like it or not. So, unless you plan to totally shut yourself off from the world and become a sad recluse for the rest of your life, you better take charge of your trickle in the fast and furious internet stream.

Worst part, if you’re “in the business”, people WILL and DO judge you before they’ve even met you, based soley on what little bits of information they can discover about you online. And don’t expect them to authenticate it or consider the context… Pff… Please!

So, what to do? If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em! I admit I have to expose more of myself than I feel comfortable with now, in a naive attempt to take more control of the “me” data out there and try to provide a more accurate image of who I really am.

Hey, it’s the world we live in today… There’s no going back. Privacy is history!

What line of work am I in?
See Radica Raeves’s LinkedIn profile.

Disclaimer:
The views expressed on this blog are mine and not those of my current, future or past employers, or anyone else for that matter. Anyone could disagree with what I write here: my employer, you or even I might look back and disagree with myself and decide to revise my opinion and update my posts. If you do disagree with anything, please comment on the post and let me know your thoughts.