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The worlds converged a bit a couple of days ago, when I found myself showing the executive team some social networking software. Ah, the fine line between personal and professional. Almost as blurry as “real” and “virtual” life. Not everyone thinks the line is fine, of course.

The Cop said, a few weeks ago, that he doesn’t think people you meet online can count as friends. We were driving to a restaurant and he said this in reponse to my mentioning something said by a “blogging friend.”

I was quite suprised by his opinion. And wanted to hone in a bit. “How long do you have to meet someone face-to-face in order to be friends? Can it just be if you are passing through their town and you meet at the airport for a few minutes? Do you have to sit down and have a drink and a conversation? Do you have to spend the whole day together?”

The Cop had no specific parameters for when a contact becomes a friend, beyond the notion that there has to be an actual physical meeting. I think this is really interesting. People are having to come to terms with these sorts of questions now — questions humans never had to think about before.

Of course, The Cop deals with people online very much like contacts: he frequents discussion boards about overhauling trucks and practicing martial arts. When I’m online, I talk to people who are on a similar (to one degree or another) spiritual path. Even the biggest Ashtanga rebel still posits some relationship to a very specific and esoteric (and in America, just plain crazy exotic) spiritual system (even if it’s a contrarian position). If I were talking to folks who overhaul Jeeps, well, I imagine the audience would be much more heterogenous. Perhaps more difficult to find like-minded individuals.

All that aside, though, there’s something about The Cop’s way of dealing with people, and my way of dealing with people, that puts us in different relationship to our web contacts/friends. I’m always curious about what people believe and feel. The Cop, he’s interested in the information people can share.

Okay, so I was showing some social networking software at work, specifically, my profile on this system, and my profile included this blog. I felt VERY disinclined to click on the link and show my blog to the powers that be. Particularly since the title of the most recent post was “Pricks.”

So I’ve started a buffer blog. A more-professional blog. That way, we can move into the miasma that is personal/professional blogging a little more gently.

Fascinatingly, one of the directors asked me, after the meeting, why anyone would want to include their blog address on a professional site. “What is the relevance?” she asked.

I am astonished by that question, and astonished that there’s never been a reason for me to think very much about why her perspective would astonish me. She is a very professional person, brought up in a family of high-end professionals. She’s probably had a professional persona since she was a child. Basically, coming at it from the opposite of the continuum from where I started (art student daughter of first generation immigrants goes to corporate).

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Practice

Practice felt great. My sacrum is cracking in all sorts of poses, and I love when that happens. I’ve been knocking off at laghu vajrasana this week, but my real “work pose” has been ustrasana. I did a couple with my thighs up against the wall this morning. Volleyball Guy came over and used his feet to push me up against the wall more solidly, so I could relax more into the back and shoulders. This feels like a kind of intelligent work. Even though it’s one of those deals where I can honestly say I both don’t know the answer and can’t even fathom the question.