I Overshare

I overshare. I tell almost every detail of my life to almost every person I have ever met. It is how I process traumatic events. It is how I handle minor annoyances. It is a method of coping, a method of celebration. Being authentically who I am and sharing it with the world allows me to be my best self.

I did not always overshare, either online or in person. I had a blog from 2005 through 2008 on the platform Xanga, in which I blogged under the anonymous name "Molchick," and was careful to never ever expose any details about my actual name or city or circumstances. (The tragedy of this level of anonymity is that I am, to this day, unable to locate or even access any of my myriad of postings.)

I joined Facebook in 2006 and was very careful to be private. This was before the days of the Newsfeed, before all details about your life were shared with your connections, before there was really any point in have "friends" on the platform. I was careful that, when I did update my status, it was vague, obtuse, lacking any details.

In 2008, a floodgate of non-university-affiliated individuals began flooding Facebook and the site changed. I had a baby and stopped blogging on Xanga. I was suddenly worried about what to write and share. There were so many connections, all from different parts of my life, and there was not a way to vary the content or tone across audiences. I tried to share non-threatening pictures and parts of my life. I started a blog on Blogger, but was careful to never mention it on Facebook and used a domain name that could not be traced to my actual identity ("fourismore").

Facebook continued its march toward expansion and more and more individuals joined the site, causing most older members to pull back, tighten the reins, become more careful about sharing. Somehow this expansion had the opposite effect on me. With every passing year, I became more open, more prone to post, more comfortable with letting private details of my life be part of the Internet. In 2012, I restarted my blog - and, this time, began posting it on Facebook as well.

The biggest change in my proclivity toward oversharing came in 2014, when I wrote a blog post that I posted on Facebook called "Living a Medicated Life," concerning my battle with depression and anxiety. I remember my hands shaking as I pressed "publish," my palms turning clammy as I shared the blog on social media, wondering if I had ended my career and destroyed friendships and made acquaintances uncomfortable with who I was. But none of these disasters came to be. Instead, I found support, connections, enhanced relationships. I suddenly realized - that if I craved authentic connections, the only way to do so was to act authenticly myself.

I have continued this march toward oversharing on social media to this day. I am not honestly sure what is left for me to touch that I have not already explored online, but I am sure I will continue to surprise myself. Oversharing online is not for everyone. It is scary to be vulnerable. I worry that I often annoy people, both with the volume of my posts as well as the personal nature of much of my content. I try to be fairly quiet about some areas, such as political ideology, and I wonder where my line in the sand is on being authentic compared to trying to play it safe. I am concerned that my desire to share and foster connections can butt up against my own children's desire for privacy. I never want to make anyone uncomfortable, ever.

But on this day in 2018, oversharing, particularly online, is a strong part of my identity. And I am so grateful for this opportunity for it to shape who I am.