Who's on First?

I think identity crisis is one of the most common maladies of our technological age.  We get so used to dividing ourselves:  we have our work identity, who we are with our family members, who we are with our closest friends, who we are when we're dealing with strangers…and now that we all live so much online, that adds a whole new set of possible selves to each of us.

We split ourselves into facets:  I could be Rainbow Fartblossom on the Happy Witches Board,  Meat_is_Yucky334 on the Cheerless Vegan Forum, @CastielsBabyMama on Twitter, Jane D'oh on Facebook…plus four or five email addresses each with its own intended audience.  It's no wonder so many of us have no idea who the hell we really are.

I don't think there's anything wrong, per se, with having multiple identities online – sometimes we need an outlet for a particular issue or part of ourselves we're exploring and we need to be able to delve into that aspect without the baggage of our other selves.  The danger, I think, comes from forgetting that the whole of a person is greater than the sum of her usernames.

I often come up against this problem here on my blog.  People who came here because of the Shadow World series might not be aware that I started my book career as a spiritual nonfiction writer; and people who met my work through my first two books might find it weird that now I write novels about vampires.  I've been asked why I don't have a separate blog where I just write about novel stuff and another one for spiritual stuff.

The short answer:  I'm lazy.

The real answer:  I decided, at some point while migrating my website over to my own name, that I was not going to live any more divided than I had to. I write a lot of things – novels about vampires, books about Pagan spirituality, books about women and body image, blogs about veganism, blogs about religion and life-path-type stuff.  I understand that not everyone who reads one will have any interest in the other, but frankly, I got tired of being two people a long, long time ago, and decided I wasn't going to do it anymore.  All of those things I write about are important to me, because I am not a single-subject person.  I'm interested in lots of things and I have things to say about them all.  So this blog, diannesylvan.com, serves as an axis point for all of those things, and I do try to keep it fairly organized so you can find what you're looking for when you come visit me.

Here on my blog I write about writing, spirituality, cooking, life stuff, funny stuff, things I love, and so forth.  On the Facebook fan page I do updates about what I'm writing and post about contests, releases, and other events, mainly to engage with fans of the Shadow World.  On Twitter I am totally random and often rather obscene, and I participate in several online fan communities for shows I watch.  (I Tweet a lot.  I mean, a LOT.) I generally prefer Twitter for short updates and I spend far more time there than I do on Facebook.

But all of those are me.  I don't have a separate identity for each.  I'm a bit more careful with my language on Facebook because I know some youngsters and relatives there that probably don't want to hear me swear like a sailor, but I'm also funnier on Twitter (because I can swear like a sailor).  But they're all me.  I am not interested in being ten different people—I am interested in being a vibrant, organic, kaleidoscopic single human being with many interests and fields of knowledge, who dips her toe in many lakes, and brings home leaves from many trees.

I don't have any Sooper Seekrit identities on the internet – I go by Dianne Sylvan or just Sylvan everywhere.  What you see is what you get.  The only identity I keep mostly to  myself is my legal name, and that's for privacy reasons as a writer, not because I feel that's a different person.  I used to feel that way – my legal identity was the only one my family and coworkers knew about – but now that my writing career is a real thing in the world, there's no need to play it cagey:  my name is Dianne Sylvan; I am an author, a blogger, a baker, a mischief maker; I teach spirituality in my own wacko way; I am slowly but surely becoming an ethical vegan; and while I used to consider myself a Wiccan, I now go by the vague appellation of Spiritual Nomad (for which I am currently working on a Big Project).

I am knee-deep in my third novel, and have written two previous works on NeoPagan spirituality.  Being a novelist is my dream and my primary work, but I also feel called to keep writing about matters of spirit, so that's what I'm doing.  A bit of a weird juxtaposition? Maybe.  But stick around: it gets weirder every day.

Welcome to my weird!