If you follow me on Twitter or Friendfeed, you know that this week is quite important. My physical future (literally) hangs in the balance.
Without revealing too many personal details, it is quite possible that I will be relocating. No, not to jail, and yes, I will continue at my current place of employment.
This is a change that I have very little control over (gratefully). However, it is a change that has caused me to take great pause in thinking about all the areas of my life that will be affected - work, friendships, church, sports teams, the bars I frequent, even the airport personnel that I interact with weekly - there are many versions of myself - identities - that I maintain on a daily basis.
These are ones I cultivate through physical attention. However, after reading a commentary from one of my favorite sources, I began to realize that during these hours of mental reflection, nary a thought drifted to the identities that I cultivate through virtual membership!
In thinking about this major life change, I've had to reflect on what I call my physical identities - those that I maintain as a member of physical society. However, it's been quite interesting, and almost a relief, to realize that much of my collective identity (the one made up of all of my identities) is not physical, but instead virtual. In fact, a relocation may affect my general interactions in quite a limited way!
Very few people spend much time cultivating their virtual identities. I've spent enough time building and researching these branches of my identit-tree (OMG, you didn't see that coming??? Hilarity!) to know where and how I will appear in online searches, and what details my profiles reveal to specific audiences. I've learned that without proper care and feeding, your online personas will wither, become outdated, or worse - subsumed by another Web participant with the same name. This affects not only you, but anyone and any organization closely affiliated with you.
Seven years ago this week, I packed my Ghetto Cruiser (same one I drive today, that loyal Jeep) with all of my earthly possessions and moved out of state. This was my third time moving myself into a new location with a limited or nonexistent network. At the time, I was both terrified and excited - but understood that a long road lay ahead if I wished to recreate the rich network of friends and colleagues I had enjoyed in the capital of the Dirty South.
This time, however, the colleagues exist and are accessible in near real-time. The friends? Likewise. My daily life, both personal and professional, involves less physical interaction than virtual. Some of my closest friends, those that I speak with on a weekly, if not daily basis, I've met fewer than a dozen times in person. Even the systems I maintain and interact with don't have a truly physical existence. It is the nature of my work, and yet, also my life. Two different identities, each collectively comprised of multiple sub-identities. Each one, a valuable component of my collective true identity. Yet, each network representative of the real me.
As I think more about this physical move, I find more peace. I've done this before and it turned out fine. However, I've never before had the network already available upon landing. This time, though I may find myself in a physically new place, my true network stays in tact, ready to catch me.
