Published 2024-11-20
tag(s): #blogging #meta
A few days ago, I was looking for something in Marginalia and Wiby. Sometimes when I don't find a satisfactory answer in DDG, or I am interested in more personal sites and not Stack Overflow answers, I give them a try.
So I landed on this site. For the life of me I can't remember what I was looking for. Or maybe I got there from a link in another page?. Anyway, later in the day I perused the rest of the content and noticed the "Pictures of me" section.
And I thought it was really fun, and figured I should have that in a more detailed "about"
section! I've seen other people including pictures in their pages, too.
Side note, I've been thinking that the one paragraph I have is rather sparse, so I should add
some a page with a more complete background about me.
And why not include a few pictures? it would paint a more complete idea of who I am.
Which of course later prompted a lot of self-doubt about "who wants to see that". And also, of course, insecurities about my appearance (probably the root of the dismissal expressed in the first sentence). It is interesting that for being so outspoken as a friend and coworker[1] I am so hesitant to show myself online.
It is particularly interesting because I have no hesitations to show myself in Instagram (and
similar sites in the distant past), but doing it so in my own site makes me think I am being
vain and...showing off, maybe?. As if the thought of uploading a picture of myself in a
little-to-no-traffic website implied that I am somehow "endorsing myself", rather than just
saying "this is how I look, just so you know".
In the social network sphere, we all are sharing our images, so I give myself a pass I think.
And I rarely upload a picture of myself but usually with others, or visiting a place, etc.
Like a hiding in plain sight kind of thing.
It's been a few days since I "decided" to add that in my /about.
When I "decided" to add an RSS feed, that same night I completed the code and uploaded the
feed file...
Clearly there's a difference about them :)
There one aspect I didn't touch on, and that is how I was raised with this (sometimes, implicit) idea that you are supposed to always be modest and humble, above all. Influence from my Christian mother, maybe? In this context, if I feel insecure about my appearance, plus have some concern about how "showing myself" might be perceived as lack of humility...yeah I can see why I keep delaying the update.
But I think it is important that I do it. And not for any "deep" reasons, but because I should
stand by my original impression that it is something fun and silly. My precedent is...code.
Yes I know, I relate everything to software, but, let me explain :)
I hesitated for a really long time about putting code in GitHub, for two reasons.
One was fear of scrutiny by others for my less than perfect code. The other, was the complete
opposite: that putting my code online would give the impression that I valued what I
wrote so much, that I had to share it with the world. As if I was in the same
level as "those open source devs" that I admired so much.
I know, neither are great reasons, but there's a good parallel to the topic at hand, I think.
Eventually I started putting my code online and...that's a story for another day, but not much
happened really. I got over my insecurities and that was it.[2]
Not unlike when I was hesitant to write publicly in my Gemini capsule[3], and then got over it. By the time I started this site, I didn't think much of it, just like I don't think much about churning out more code in public.