Who am I?

It's so confusing how to build your identity online, and I tend to fragment too much. There's the Sara Brumfield who blogs here, contributes to Parent Hacks, and occasionally comments on blogs like Horizon. There's the Sara Brumfield who is a entrepeneur and software engineer who is building Dressr, a community based web application for fashion and clothing that I blog about (not enough) here and comments on entrepeneurship blogs and forums... Then there's the corporate Sara Brumfield who really doesn't like to mix her "daylighting" job into her online identity, although clues do exist.

I just ran across this blog for Wonderful! Wall Graffitti, and was inspired to send Mary McPhail, the founder & blogger, a note (not something I often do) expressing my admiration on how her blog combines her life and her business:

I just ran across your blog (via Wonderful's website, via Pamela Slim's
Escape from Cubicle Nation blog) and wanted to drop you a note and tell
you how much I am enjoying it. The combination of your business life
and your personal life makes for a great read and is very inspiring --
In my dreams I'll be able to meld child rearing, my marriage, and a
business into one great big messy fun experience. (My parents did it;
so it is very much what I want to model for my daughter.) (I'm building
a web application that I think I'll be able to turn into a business, not
just a project, so it's not entirely a pipe dream.)

Anyway, this email is mostly in response to your post that ends "that's
not how other people blog" -- Don't worry about it! Your blog is all
you, and it represents what you do, the values of your company in a way
no corporate PR-approved blog ever could. Keep it up.

It was an "ah-ha" moment, albeit a small one. Why am I trying so hard to keep all these different aspects of myself separate? What's the worst that could happen if the day job figured out how serious I am about Dressr? (What, fire me? Oh, that would suck -- I'd have to get off my butt and work on Dressr full time.... Darn!)

So -- this is officially it -- I'm combining the non-corporate Sara identities here henceforth. You'll start seeing more fashion and business oriented posts here, and more status on how the project is going.

Hopefully this anti-schizophrenic move will actually make this blog more interesting all around, too!