Why I'm a Cat Garden online

The truth is I've never felt brave on the internet, either using my real name in traditional social media to connect with family and friends or participating in interests forums with an alias. I'm always self-conscious and anxious when interacting with strangers, and using an alias online does not help with boosting my confidence.

Our online actions like websites visited, words posted, time reading are increasingly surveilled. And in recent years, western societies have become increasingly polarized, in a way that I don't think it is necessarily safe for me to post my thoughts publicly on my own name.

At my former employer, an international organization, we were not allowed to make comments related to work or political statements in social media. Doing so would have been considered against staff rules and be grounds for termination. Although I don't think HR was necessarily stalking employee's social media, it still meant I had to be careful with what I posted online.

The things we write and re-blog about at our personal website/blog and more so in algorithmic social media can expose us in ways that could be damaging.

So I choose my online alias based on the things I like (cats obviously) and the things I want to build, a digital garden where I can grow my ideas, instead of letting them whither away in a dusty corner of my brain. And it's in Spanish because that's my mother tongue. Also, gardens are places where you can build community and after years of lurking quietly on the web I want to participate in it and find my people. So in the end, it's not as much about confidence as about freedom...