Struggling to Write an About Me Section

I made this website roughly 6 months ago. While I have steadily filled out other parts of the site, a couple sections still haven't been touched. One page for photography will get content at some point, I just need to collect some shots from the past few years that I want to show. One section, "Travel and Life," probably just needs to be removed, since my blog already kinda covers that.

One other segment that has been mothballed for several months, however, is my "about me" section. Which is a bit strange. You could probably get the gist of what I'm like based on the totality of content on here, but I have yet to actually give a basic rundown on who I want you to know me to be.

Assuredly, this is partially a willful course-correction from my old social media habits. The further I get from my deleted accounts, the more harrowing it is that I shared far, far more on there than I ever should have. Someone sufficiently motivated could have absolutely social-engineered some real nonsesne based on what I put out there. With hindsight, the degree to which a Facebook account can trace the totality of a person's public-facing life is a little mortifying.

Stepping away from that, I am re-adopting some 2005-esque sensibilities. Don't unduly trust strangers online, don't share too much, don't doxx yourself, all that stuff. Online safety is critically important, and for all the fun DIY aspects that the indie web has brought back, it also has fewer guardrails and users need to be deliberate and aware.

Today's political climate, likewise, make it feel dangerous to be too known. The regime in place here has used immigration enforcement as an excuse to make folks disappear, and people's lives are getting ruined by culture war hatred. In my own region, education is getting wielded like a weapon by power-brokers, with at least one teacher who lost her teaching license for directing students towards online resources for books recently banned based on queer or racial or ethnic content. Likewise, religious zealots targeted a trans graduate student at a nearby university, presenting her with an inexcusably off-topic screed submitted in a psych class, which got turned into an anti-religious discrimination case when it was, rightfully, given a failing grade. These folks are ruining lives and livelhoods.

Things have also gotten materially unsafe for several of my favorite people. I have no idea how my data, or theirs, could be used to harm them. I started stepping away from social media in fear that I was continuing to feed a machine that could ruin, or end, the lives of those loved ones. I cannot stand to think that some node of data from me helps get a friend profiled and targeted. The best I knew to do was to cut off the flow of information to platforms whose owners align with those who would do them harm.

Even if that wasn't a concern, even if things were kinda normal, I'd struggle with this About Me. I don't know what I want to put, but I also know what I don't want to put

For one thing, I don't want this to look like it's part of a LinkedIn profile. I hate my tendency to define myself around my job. Don't get me wrong, I get a lot of value out of the work I do, and it takes up enough of my life that it is part of my story of course. But man, leading off with a job description sounds so unbelievablly boring. I'm more than my 9 to 5.

I also don't want to lead in with my personal interests. Especially not media that I like. I'm also more than my consumption habits.

Likewise, I don't want it to come off like an awkward, stilted dating profile bio.

So yeah. I don't know what I want to tell you about me. I'm stuck between old oversharing habits that I'm trying to curb, and a year of crippling fear, where it's safer to be unknown and not stand out, where "the less you know, the better." There has to be a golden mean betwen the two, one I am still trying to find.