The Bewildered

In the last year, I’ve been hearing a lot about building a “personal brand” or “branding oneself.” I joined Twitter recently in part because I was advised at a non-academic careers session that doing so would make me more employable, though precisely how it would accomplish this was more mysterious—apparently it would involve writing blog posts about my nostalgia for Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, of which I have very little, and so am thus nearly doomed, I suppose.

In a recent post, blogger Alina Kulesh, a new Twitter acquaintance, suggests she enjoys apps like Gowalla and Foursquare because they allow her to publish her presence at specific restaurants, clubs and shops, thereby building her brand, an advantage she’s found overrides the oft-spouted fears about eroding privacy or potential security breaches. She’s had some success too, which I very much applaud her for—recently gaining an opportunity to write a weekly arts & culture column for photojunkie.

The notion that one must brand oneself also drives the proliferation of so-called lifestyle blogs, many of which dedicate lists, posts or even entire blogs to enumerating “things I like.” To brand oneself seems to mean that one should associate oneself with particular items, shops, products, adjectives, colours, destinations, restaurants, depths-of-field, styles, foods, choices, habits and, yes, brands. This accretion of characteristics, whether purchased, coveted, or simply noticed, allows one entrance into particular identities—urban homesteader, avid locavore, dedicated maker, fashionista, all-of-the-above, etc. On the whole, I don’t disagree that such a strategy can prove immensely successful. I’ve seen some bloggers build impressive online personas quite rapidly and earn some not insignificant profit by selling their personal brand to bigger brands. Others find communities of like-minded brands with which to mingle, converse and broadcast. And of course, whether at career-building sessions or gossiping with friends, we’ve all heard branding success stories: those who’ve found employment, creative opportunities or niche-lovers through their successful consolidation of an online persona.

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I’m really not a phone person. I never have been, except for a brief period when I was quite young and being allowed to answer the phone was still a novelty. Incidentally, or perhaps not, that was also the era in which the library—or some other miraculous community group—offered a “dial-a-story” service, a rather compelling lure to the telephone machine. At that age, my mother was often complimented on my “grown up” phone manner. I would always answer a call thusly: “Hello, this is Carolyn Veldstra speaking.” Most callers gulped stifled laughter at that point, until one chided my mother and instilled the fear that a predator would learn my name from this exchange, track me down and steal me away. After that, I learned to just say “hello,” but it always felt too blunt, naked, harsh.

Today, I’m more likely to be told that I answer the phone with a tone that says, “I really don’t want to be talking to you.” Usually this is not true. I credit a genealogy of monotone talkers for this foible—it could be a Dutch thing. We’re not known for our radically expressive cadences. However, as an adult, I’ve realized the disadvantages to being assumed a reluctant telephonic conversationalist, and so I’ve worked on it. Though I came close to being a near-“normal” phone person when I had a “real” job, which required a professional phone presence (full disclosure: this normalcy came after I was told off by my boss for seeming perpetually disinterested in our phone conversations), it seems I can’t quite get over it. I loathe the phone, and that ire bleeds through into every tentative and bland “hello?”

What kinds of sweet nothings is Beatrix whispering to Annette? Wouldn't you like to know...

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