One of the leaders from my side business made a comment about social media and how the audience should know what you do without you having to explain it.  It made my head spin.  Perhaps because I’m naturally all over the place, thoughts whirling, not a clear direction because there is so much I want to do.  Perhaps it’s because I don’t think a person is able to ever fully display all facets of themselves in a snapshot, a thumbnail, 240 characters.  And I also think that there are different intentions with different platforms and even different profiles.  So the point, for me at least, became about how to be intentional with what I share. The intention behind any act is what matters.  In the same vein, when we operate with intention the purpose of what we do is clear.  Even then, I will still add for those with multi-faceted purposes, that level of clarity isn’t always possible.  The point is to draw people in, get enough attention to rouse curiosity and go from there. 

Life is about building a story and learning how to share it.  we all have a story to tell, we all have goals, and the combination of those things brings us to our purpose and intention.  If someone isn’t sure about your intent after scrolling through your content, that’s a different story.  The same can be said for life at that point: if you aren’t able to establish a clear goal or purpose then you won’t get where you want to be.  The point being when all the cards are on the table, if we still can’t tell where you stand, that can be problematic.  I do want to add a reminder that no matter what, people aren’t omniscient so there will be a degree of explanation in all we do—we are human and we can’t avoid that.  As a whole we need to stop the expectation that people know everything about our preferences and style with just a look.  We want to get away from rash judgements so we need to break the habit of expecting people to know how to treat us with just a look.

Devising and crafting a persona takes time—think about how long it takes us to be comfortable with who we are, to have an awareness of self that we are confident enough in to declare “This is who I am.”  If it takes us that long to make a determination and declaration of who we are, then how can we expect others to have that knowledge/understanding as well? Do I want someone to be able to put the story together to figure it out?  Absolutely.  Do they need to do that from a single snippet, a moment in time? Absolutely not.  Curating anything is a delicate art and when it comes to personality and desire/drive, that’s an even more delicate thing.  And those tastes change, those goals change, the priority around them change.  Life isn’t meant to be stagnant, defined on one thing.  It’s meant to flow and adapt and we are as well.