After much thinking and consulting with friends and associates on the subject, I finally went and created a public “fan” page for myself on Facebook.

I already manage about a half-dozen Facebook pages for my company, band and other entities, so I wasn’t looking forward to adding another. But with Facebook becoming so ubiquitous and more and more people I don’t actually know wanting to be my “friend,” I had to come up with a solution to both connect with new fans and still keep my personal profile private. So here we are. And the shocking thing? I’m kind of enjoying it.

For the first time, I’m embracing Facebook instead of begrudgingly accepting it. I’ve never been all that active with updating my personal profile. Sure, I’ll occasionally dump a batch of photos or share links, but Twitter has always been my primary tool for spontaneous communication. However, armed with the assumption that people who actively “like” my public page on Facebook are basically saying, “Yes, we want to hear about your stuff,” I feel more freedom — and a responsibility — to post more content than I do on my personal profile.

Self-promotional post? Sure! Photos of works in progress? Yep! Mass invites to events? Let’s do it! I feel like I’m using the page more like I was using Live Journal back in its heyday, balancing the public blogging aspects with the community-building ones.

So, my real friends who aren’t fans of the page will be seeing less self-promotional junk from me. And this blog might get less updating in between major events in lieu of easy-to-create Facebook posts (already used the hell out of the e-mail-to-wall feature). But fear not. If you’re not a Facebook junkie, I’ll still be dishing the goods here. You’ll just be missing out on the fun stuff.