Now that I have my own name preserved online as the URL lisadevaney.com I’ve got to come up with a plan for what this blog’s purpose will be.

As of today, there isn’t really a concrete plan. In general, I want to use this blog to share a lot of personal stories. If there is one thing I know a lot about, it is stories about my own life. I’ve got many, so I expect to collect a lot of fun content here. From time to time, I’ll also be writing about my profession of public relations and about trends in social media.

In choosing to use my own name as my online brand moving forward, it marks a few emotional steps for me. For many years when I first came online, I used the alias (((Futuregirl))). I felt, way back then in the 90s, that the Internet was still a scary, untrustworthy place and therefore you needed to hide behind a silly fake name. When I started on YouTube, I also used a silly name of LadyEleanorRosakitty, and regretted that I didn’t just make my YouTube channel in my own name. Well, now that we’ve all grown up online, and for the most part stayed safe, it is time to be brave and transparent and take ownership of where we go and what we do online.

I’ve now been living openly online for a number of years, and to date nothing horrible has happened. There have been some awkward moments, for sure. You don’t always want some people from your past finding you easily. Now, I live relatively comfortably with being open and sharing a lot of information online. I don’t share everything, and I’m always self-censoring, but for the most part, bits and pieces of my day to day life are archived with the Internet somewhere. You’ll find me via Twitter @lisadevaney on LinkedIn, Facebook, foursquare, Spotify and more.

So what happened to Hai Media Group? This was my PR and social media consultancy, and the brand is still floating about the Internet in places where I haven’t updated things. I was self-employed for about seven years, and HMG served as a great showcase for all my work. Now that I am back to working for an agency, HMG is no more. I also think that if I ever end up going freelance again, I will operate under my own name as a brand.

Owning my own lisadevaney.com blog means I’m taking full responsibility for anything I do online, and owning anything I create online. This is all a little bit scary, but because of many years of online experience, I’m ready.