5 years ago I was having a morning coffee with Steve Pavlina (if you're anything close to the blogging phenomenon, then you remember him, huge online presence in mid 2000s). He was in Bucharest for a couple of weeks and I took advantage of that to tie up some lose ends, spend some quality time with an influential blogger and, quite unexpectedly, to teach him a bit of Argentine tango. Yeah, at that time I was really big on dancing Argentine tango, to the point I was actually teaching it.
As we were sipping our coffee he told me something that, 5 years later, really stroke a chord in me: "You know, I'm still getting emails from people who still think I'm married and I got rid of coffee. Although none of these things is true anymore.". Steve divorced a couple of years before that visit in Bucharest and he also had a tentative to get rid of coffee about the same time. He actually wrote about both things on his - immensely popular, at that time - personal development blog.
But at the time of his Bucharest visit, none of those things was true anymore: he was happily divorced (already starting a new relationship) and he was also drinking coffee occasionally.
And yet, his online persona was still carrying echoes of his previous activities.
I remembered this because yesterday I experienced something similar. A Romanian blogger wrote a list post about 10 of the most influential entrepreneurs in his life and, to my surprise, I came in second.
It's been almost 2 years since my last entrepreneurial project, a co-working space in Bucharest. Since then, I'm enjoying a less spectacular life, with way less responsibility and risk, and with a lot more benefits: I work remote as a React Native programmer for a startup in UK. And yes, the word "enjoying" is very accurate, after years of stress and pressure I do enjoy this lifestyle a lot. Yes, I have to give away some of my time and, every once in a while, things get hairy and I have to work more than I'd want to, but, overall, I am more flexible and relaxed than before.
And yet, the years in which I was hustling and mentoring other entrepreneurs are still heavy enough to persist in the memory of a lot of people out there.
The reason I'm writing this is to bring into awareness that our digital identities are more inertial than we think. Whatever piece of information we share now is defining a more complex conglomerate of traits that will be collectively remembered as "you".
I don't know yet if this is good or bad, but I do know that there is a gap between our real lives and whatever other people remember as being "us" out there.
There is a real inertia of our identities and, the wider that gap it is, the more difficult will be for us to choose (and perform) another role in Samsara.
Previous posts in the challenge:
- 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day One: All Ultramarathons Start With Just One Small Step
- 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Two: How Much Garbage Do You Carry With You?
- 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Three: Pushing Things To Happen Versus Letting Them Happen "Through" You
- 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Four: The Rain In Spain Stays Mainly On The Plain
- 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Five: Books, Coffee And The Smell Of A Gentle Autumn
- 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Six: Revisiting The Harry Potter Trees In Turia
- 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Seven: Sand Castles
- 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Eight: Be Careful Of New Beginnings
- 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Nine: Tuesday's Free Writing
- 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Ten: The Power And Toxicity Of Lists
- 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Eleven: Unblocking Writer's Block - A Primer
- 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Twelve: Riding The Wave Of Change
- 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Thirteen: When All You Have Is A Hammer, Everything Looks Like A Nail
- 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Fourteen: Sunday Stillness
- 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Fifteen: The Next Major Social Disruption Will Be Technological
- 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Sixteen: The Difference Between Sound And Light
- 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Seventeen: Ten Years Of Bitcoin
- 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Eighteen: How Long Is Long Enough? Spoiler: Until It's Done...
- 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Nineteen: The Surprising Benefits Of Gratitude
- 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Twenty: Just A Photo Journal For Today
- 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Twenty One: 5 Things I Noticed So Far In Spain
- 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Twenty Two: Things I Look For In A Coffee Shop, From A Digital Nomad Perspective
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I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me 
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