I was having this exact conversation with someone yesterday. I have my real life, and my Penelope life. I'm the same person, just compartmentalised. For now it's not hard keeping them separate, but who knows in the future.
Good luck figuring that one out :o)

For me it would be bad. I want to keep those two lives as separated as possible. At least for the next couple of years.

it's not a bad thing. It might be a tricky thing, but not a bad thing.

Wait, you forgot your fantasy life, in which you and I are married and we run a lovely little bed and breakfast on the coast of Maine.

Mmmm...we have a good life, and we love each other very much. And every Sunday morning we read the paper in bed and fist each other.

Ok, you can't leave us hanging like that. I'm sure there's a good story in this...

I have no idea how you even kept the illusion of the separation blogging with your real name. I never have mentioned mine and still my dad found it. Hope sleeping on it helps!

difficult situation... hope you find a balance and solution.

Since you have relationships with so many bloggers around the world and visit them and everything on such a regular basis, I can't understand how you can even keep them separate. When your offline life actually involves a lot of online people, it has to be really hard.

I'll admit, though, when I first saw that graphic I thought you were going to be posting about cloning yourself and having sex with your clone.

I have to admit, I was surprised when I met you last October and we talked about this a little bit to learn that you were leading separate lives.

Reading your blog, twitter, etc. you get the FEELING like you're seeing it all. I know that's unrealistic... but it seems that way.

You are now entering the twilight zone, where virtual reality merges with its other dimension... reality! dodo dodo, dodo dodo.

All I'm thinking about is "worlds colliding!"

I tried when I first started to keep it all seperate but now my online life is so much more a part of me than 99% of the nonsense in my offline life that I have stopped trying.

Although it's always scary when two parts of your life meet!

You know that you and I are totally opposite here...my real life bleeds onto my blog and vice versa, but that's me. And hell, sometimes I wish I had started off more like you...

I've recently wondered about the thing Avi brought up, since it seems like you are meeting more and more bloggers. I can't imagine meeting that many people and not having the lines blur quite a bit.

In the end, I hope you find your balance and what is right for you. Because I can tell you that the water is warm over on this side of the pool but who cares if it is....you may not like it like that ;).

I have the same thing goin on. My online life seems to be more rich and exciting than my real life. I don't mind it but I think a lot of people would consider that a problem.

I think the separation is healthy, personally. I have plenty of blog-friends that I love hanging out with, but I also have plenty of "offline friends". I think I'd go mad if my online-life became my entire life.

It's probably meeting so many people and pushing that online relationship into another facet of your life that is causing this issue. Now you have not 2 lives but 3. Online only, offline only, and the people who are both online and offline. Just one more thing for you to keep up with, eh?

LOL at avitable's ending part of his comment above.

I think we all have some sort of dual lives management going on. Even people that are not online have their work life, at the office or on the job, then they have their home life, with family and friends. And I think the majority of the people have some stark differences between the two, meaning they are a different person at work and a different person at home.

It's that balance and merging that can be hard.

I can't imagine finding out anything about your real life that would shock me, unless you are really an 8 year old little girl inside a man-bot.

It kind of does make sense though - cartoons, pudding, Hello Kitty......hmmmmm.

I think it's okay to let your two world collide from time to time. The only time you have to worry is when you start living your life through someone else's blog.

I almost said "Poppy" in a conversation with a work friend yesterday.

I did, in fact, say Dawg. Oops.

It's not such a bad thing to merge the two. Blogging, at it's core, is an extension of your "real" life. A big long pole with a mirror attached to the end of it.

Even though I don't ever use my name I think of blogging as something "I" do not a separate thing.Turnbaby od Turn is just one of my nicknames.

I do the ultimate merger of online and offline worlds here in a couple of weeks --and I cannot wait;-)

So basically you're walking around with a monkey while wearing a cape with eye make-up in real life now?

Cool.

I remember George Costanza admonishing Jerry Seinfeld about the "worlds" of George and how they must remain separate. If the worlds collided they would cancel each other out. Hmm.

I was hoping you were going to reveal some sort of super hero identity.

yah i can completely relate to this, i have my personal life that only certain friends and family see and then there is my "projected" life that everyone can be a part of.

I dunno. I am pretty much who I am online. There's a LOT I don't go into detail about, but a few people in bloggy land know more about me than others may, because I've opened up more to some via email, chat, whatever.

But, I think the person I represent online is pretty much the Adena of real life.

I dunno. You've met me. Maybe I'm completely off on that assessment of myself.

I know there's things about you that you don't share. You're pretty vague on here about a lot of stuff, but the personality in your blog is pretty much who you are IRL, in my opinion.

Except, you're taller in person. :)

Oh I think my blog is a good reflection of who I am... I'm not inventing a personality that's radically different than who I am in Real Life... it's just that the two worlds I inhabit... online and offline... are so very different. I don't drag my blog into Real Life very often, just as I don't bring the more personal aspects of my Real Life into my blog. But the lines are starting to blur a bit, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. :-)

I'm totally looking for the vase or chalice between the 2 Daves. ;)

Well whether it's a good or bad thing depends on whether you *want* the two lives to merge. For someone like you though I would imagine it almost impossible to keep your online life from bleeding into your real life. The blogger meetups for example. Now, the things you *can* control is how much of your real life (family, work etc) you want to allow others in your online life to know about.

If only life were more like Photoshop. Filter > blur - oh god, no blur. Abort the blur. Privacy in both worlds is a good thing. Balance is key.

If your online life is a brilliant little cartoon guy, richly colored, amazingly expressive, and good pals with a zingy little monkey, mine is a stick figure with a banana peel. I have an unfancy little personal blog that I don't update as frequently as I should, a Flickr account I haven't made much use of yet and email to check. I only wish more people in my real life would come read my blog! I just think of my online showing-up as being a virtual extension of my 'real' life and not a thing apart, per se. I'd be motivated to do more online if I knew my real world would go look at it and interact with me there. I love reading all kinds of other blogs, including this one, and that takes up the bulk of my time on the computer.

Heh, no point there, just a different perspective...

I understand the dilemma. It comes up every so often with my lives too.

Currently, it's with the college class I'm teaching. I want to show them Twitter and Flickr and Seesmic and FriendFeed, but I don't necessarily want to directly point out all MY on-line stuff at the same time....

Mine is all one and the same. It works for me.

   
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