Ever thought about starting a blog?

From a corporate perspective, I guess it works well with working in the knowledge industry. Blogging obviously takes some time out of your days, but since you need to keep up anyway, the blog can serve as vessel and a log for your thoughts, helping you to sort your insights—or lack thereof.

Or maybe you just find good stuff on the web and think it would be fun to have your own place to show off your impeccable taste in whatever. Maybe you are a person who thinks a lot about stuff, so much that you need somewhere to let your thoughts out, to set them free.

When navigating this, there are four Ps to keep track of:

• Public
• Private
• Professional
• Personal

Some people gets these dimensions confused. You don’t have to be professional, but by putting your texts out there, you will be public, wether you want to or not. Being professional is a choice, but you have to accept that your thoughts are being made public, because you yourself made them so. Still, it’s important to remember that your texts are merely a caption in time of a small part of you. Writing a silly text doesn’t necessarily make you silly; it’s just a fragment in the greater scheme of things.

Some people say they  feel uncomfortable with being personal, but what they really mean, is that they don’t want to be too private. Being private is a choice, but being personal isn’t. Your views are your own. You might think that you’re some sort of an universal oracle, detracted from lowly personal views, but there’s too many shades of grey to even the truth for you to its advocate.

I think I’ve got a firm grasp on the public part. I know that I don’t matter that much, that my tiny fragment of content contribution to the web is peripheral, but I’m very aware that my texts are indexed, searchable, subscribed, and syndicated. I accept and embrace it. There’s the risk that someone will think that I’m a narcissistic self-appointed expert in a meta-universe, but I’ve grown to accept it.

Also, I got the personal aspect down. It’s me posting my opinions on things, and that’s all. I have more than a few ideas on what the PR industry is and what it should be, and I think I’m entitled to exercising my right to convey my views in order to influence the influentials of tomorrow within my industry.

But my problems with blogging lies rather between the dimensions of professional and private. because these are the two actual choices I have. Over time, I’ve knowingly slided over into a very professional state with my blogging. Not professional in a sense that I get paid to blog or make money out of it directly—because I don’t. But professional in such a way that I blog about stuff that actually pays my bills.

But over the years, I’ve almost stopped completely to blog about private stuff. And this is my conflict.

I actually started out blogging by writing about private matters. And I the truth is, that I miss it sometimes. To be totally transparent on this, I hereby confess that I think that I’m pretty darn good at writing about my private life. So why don’t I?

I honestly don’t have the answer to that question. I think the Swedish journalist and blogger Sofia Mirjamsdotter have mastered this art. From time to time, she writes from the depths of her heart, and she does it with such an integrity and honesty that one single blog post can become relevant for thousands of people, simply by being so true to her own thoughts. And as much as I love all kinds of blogs, I truly believe that this type of blogging is the truest of all blogging forms.

I think I could blog about my inner thoughts as well, and sometimes I want to, but I rarely do. Is it because I would feel too naked? Is it because i feel the professional stakes are too high? Am I afraid of loosing the little control I have over myself as a brand? Or maybe I simply don’t have the stomach for it?

I don’t know. But I do know that there is a question of personal resources in terms of time and energy. It would be very difficult to manage discussions on a variety of subjects and I know that I’s probably have to set up another platform for those thoughts. I think I have responsibility to address a certain set of subject matters on this blog, but managing one more blog at this point would be overwhelming.

I think the way for me to move forward with this is to add a private layer to this blog. Because there are correlations being a human of flesh and blood in a professional setting. And to add this dimension slowly over time and to see how it evolves. After all, we humans are complex creatures, and that if anything is what makes us interesting.

10 things you probably didn’t know about me:

1. I think BigBrother is a great tv-show.
2. From time to time I think of getting into MMA.
3. Sometimes I play with the idea to suddenly start a new life somewhere where I could do blue-collar work, like working as fisherman in Alaska or something.
4. I struggle with my weight.
5. I’ve been wanting to write an important novel, but I’ve lost the calling somewhere along the way.
6. I could see myself as a father, but I can’t for the life of me understand how hard-working and ambitious parents manage to keep their lives in some sort of balance.
7. Too much time is spent away from my wife these days.
8. In my twenties, my professional identity was very important to me, but as I turned 30, suddenly I wanted to build other things than myself.
9. When I hit 40, I’ll probably have a meltdown or something.
10. I have some sort of strange phobia for butterflies and moths.