Hiding In Plain Sight?

Someone said something to me recently that I've been thinking about ever since.

'You hide.'

He was talking partly about how I show up online; the Lego-style characters I use here instead of pictures of myself and Railway Reads, where there's literally a book in front of my face.

My first reaction was: I don't hide. I'm on stages all the time. I make Compliance In The Wild videos and host a podcast. I'm hardly difficult to find.

But it pressed a button he probably didn't know was there. Because a friend once said something similar: 'You're very secretive.' I disagreed with that too.

And yet, I've started wondering whether there's a difference between being open and being visible. You can tell people quite a lot about yourself while still being very careful about which bits they get to see.

And perhaps I've always done that. But I'm not convinced that's a bad thing.

I don't subscribe to the idea that authenticity requires us to turn ourselves inside out in public. Some things are private, others are irrelevant. And sometimes you simply don't owe anybody an explanation.

I'm also not about to abandon the Lego images, because they are very distinctive and memorable. I know that because people tell me. But I am interested in the question the comment has left me with:

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗮𝗺 𝗜 𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗼𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘄, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗮𝗺 𝗜 𝗵𝗶𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴?

I don't have the answer yet.

But I'm going to give it some more thought.