incomplete perceptions of self

Sometimes I think about how people can only know the facets of yourself that you expose to them, and that it's easy to forget which facets they know (that shape their perception of you) because in your head you always have the "full picture". This came about as a friend at work commented about how she needed to "corrupt" me, and I'm here thinking, yeah, well, I don't talk much about all the filthy porn I've read (written/watched) in fandom at work, no. And they have a sense of my left-leaning politics, but a different coworker remarked (happily), "Oh, you're an activist!" after we followed each other on Instagram and she saw that I had participated in March for Our Lives.

So in the intervening two months, we've hired a couple new folks at work and I have developed some work friendships into real friendships! We do dinner and movie dates and a couple have even been over to our new apartment in the Heights and met our cat. We exchange funny memes via text and complain about work but also other stuff, and at least one girl I've talked to about kpop fandom (and "yaoi fanfiction" lol). A few others are at least fandom-conversant (enough to use "shipping" correctly), and I'm sure some read fic, but we didn't go in detail, and I have no idea what kind of fandom presence they have; but to be fair, neither do they know where I stand. Or stood. I'm barely active in fandom now, beyond passively consuming the odd (or old) fic, and reblogging cute fanart once in a while.

Anyway, it's that -- but also my current interest in "Crazy Rich Asians" and "Banana Fish" and how the former intersects with how strongly I feel about Asian-American media representation, and all the other feelings I have about politics and justice in this country right now. Probably my Twitter feed conveys the most complete picture of who I am, from the whiny to the cute cat pictures to the angry retweets about politics to occasional flailing about fannish stuff. Instagram is culled to the good food and fun adventures -- though Insta stories conveys a little bit more of the mundane -- and god knows I barely touch or update Facebook anymore. But it's definitely something I reflect on once in a while, the incomplete picture everyone in our lives has of who we are as people, necessarily. And at the same time, the probably skewed perception we have of ourselves in how we project to the public, or to certain groups or people. We will never have a full understanding of how others few us; it's at heart about the presence in and access to our lives, but it's no longer just limited by physical presence but also by which social media platform we allow them access to.

And that's enough navel-gazing for this Friday morning. I'm back to coffee and cake for breakfast, plus finishing this Agatha Christie mystery, and then I'll exercise and make lunch and go out for drinks and food with some friends from work tonight. And a boardgame day with a different group of friends tomorrow! And then so much traveling in August to see so many people, and it will be fun but also exhausting. I'm looking forward to it!