Who Are These People?

The next piece was chosen for the category of awareness of audience and voice. For this piece, I chose our first blog post; “What’s in Your Wallet?” The prompt for this assignment was:

     “Write a one-page profile about yourself, using only the contents you find to represent your life, and post it to your blog. Your profile should answer these questions: Taken separately or together, how do the contents of your wallet construct an image of your identity? What assumptions might someone make about your personality, values, or identity based on what you carry? If all they had to go on is your wallet, what would people miss or be unable to know about you?

When I first viewed this assignment, I was very nervous. This was my first introduction to blogs and blogging and I was not sure what to include and what not to include from the contents of my purse. My audience was new to me, I did not know my peers that would be veiwing my post or the instructors very well. I had never even posted anything on the internet that could be read by any and every one. I did leave out a couple of things that were in my purse that I would not like the world to know about, but I pretty much stayed true to the contents of my enormous purse.

I also had the challenge of finding my voice again. I decided to just go for it and there it was, hidden, but not buried. It has been many years since I have written, but once I started, I couldn’t stop. I don’t think the concept of blogging will stick with me. I enjoy my privacy. My writing is also very special to me. The fact that other people are reading it and tearing it apart is too much for me to handle. One specific place where my voice stood out was when I wrote dialogue about how I would react to my purse missing:

    "YOU LOOKED THROUGH MY PURSE!! WHAT AN INVASION OF MY PRIVACY!" I scream at the innocent man. "I mean, thank you!"

Unfortunately, I feel that this is truly how I would react. This also symbolized how I was feeling about other people looking at my work. Instead of thanking someone for bring back my property, I would feel the need to first accost them for seizing the opportunity to look into a woman’s purse. All in all, I had a lot of fun with this assignment and I hope you can enjoy the humor and reality of my essay.